Mary Sue

see mary-sue. a female fanfiction character who is so perfect as to be annoying. the male equivlalent is the marty-stu. often abbreviated to “sue”. a mary sue character is usually written by a beginning author. often, the mary sue is a self-insert with a few “improvements” (ex. better body, more popular, etc). the mary sue character is almost always beautiful, smart, etc… in short, she is the “perfect” girl. the mary sue usually falls in love with the author’s favorite character(s) and winds up upstaging all of the other characters in the book/series/universe. there are several main types of mary sue:

victim!sues: the victim!sue is your whiny, wimpy, pathetic female character who can’t seem to do much of anything except cry and get herself into trouble that the romantic interest of the fic has to rescue her from.

warrior!sues: the warrior!sue is usually loud, obnoxious and (of course) an amazing warrior. she’ll usually have some tragic past that led her to become a warrior, and she’ll upstage all of the canonical characters with her mad sueish powerz.

mage!sue: similar to the warrior!sue, the mage!sue has amazing stregnth in magic, or has a magical power that n-body else has. she’ll usually wind up upstaging all of the magical characters of the series.

punk!sue: also called noncomformist!sue or goth!sue, the punk!sue is usually written by female beginners in the 11-15 age group. the punk!sue is loud, obnoxious, annoying and generally the type of person who you’d want to send off to boot camp for six months. the punk!sue almost always has angst coming out of her ears and isn’t really a bad person, she’s just oh!-so-angry at whatever tragic past the author has chosen to give her. the punk!sue is based on what the 11-15 year old author thinks is “cool” and wishes she could be. this includes evil!sues.

misfit!sue: this includes all sues who are supposedly geeks, nerds, misfits, etc. usually, the misfit!sue doesn’t start out as inhumanly beautiful, but winds up getting a makeover and finding out she had the potential to be a guy-magnet (or girl-magnet, depending on the genre) all along. also includes the “my parents want me to do this but i want to do that and it’s not fair!!one!” type of sue. usually, this sue is very bookish and smart, but will find some sort of physical talent n-body expected and become a star as a result.

another thing to note is that a sue will usually have a completely off-the-wall name, like “viquetoria”. the more wierd and pretentious the name of the character, the more likely it is that she’s a sue.

finally, sues often have wierd, improbable or impossible bloodlines. a secret half-elf child of elrond and a nameless human would be an example of this. a character who was dumbledore’s grandchild and tom riddle’s daughter would be another example.
the character in the hp fanfic was a complete and utter sue. she moved across the street from harry. she was beautiful, smart and pretty. they fell in wuv almost immediately. she threw all of the characters out of character and generally upstaged everyone. it was quite obnoxious.
a s-xist term used to enforce the misogynistic ideals that female characters/authors shouldn’t be allowed to fantasize or write anything along the lines of wish fulfillment. its misogynistic qualities are exemplified in many ways, most notably being the fact that it’s not a term dominated by the male counterpart despite existing in a patriarchal society, as well as the fact that the male counterpart is largely undecided upon in name and also undefined (see urban dictionary’s gary stu entry which has no definition but to say “a male mary sue”, and the marty-stu entry which involves the “mary sue” definition to define it).

it’s usually used on the whole to bully new authors out of writing female characters altogether, making the task seem so daunting to some that they now only write slash fictions with two male characters, also exemplifying the misogynistic qualities this term involves.
1.

fan fiction reader: why don’t we just call all bad/annoying characters “special snowflakes” instead of using a female name like mary-sue in a derogatory fashion?

2.

troll: you’re writing a mary-sue to pair with the canon character you fat low life, it’s pathetic and so are you!

3.

author: i’m so afraid of having my female character labeled as a mary-sue that i only write male characters!
a female character who is so perfect that she is annoying. the name originated in a very short star trek story that mocked the sort of female characters who showed up in fanfiction. it usually refers to original female characters put into fanfiction, but can refer to any character.

mary-sues are characters who are usually extraordinarily gorgeous, amazingly talented, unusually powerful, and exceedingly attractive to whoever the author has a crush on. they often possess ridiculously fancy and pretentious first names — angel, raven, jewel, lorelei bianca julia marizza snape — and are very, very annoying.

mary-sue is often abbreviated to ‘sue.’ the male equivelant is either marty-stu or gary-stu.
your buffy fanfic has a problem. her name is alayne lorelei gemma jeshika shanna, she has violet eyes and raven hair, curves in all the right places, is more powerful than willow and a better fighter than buffy and faith combined, and spike is in love with her. she’s a total mary-sue, and she’s really annoying!”
a character too perfect for their setting. most often, this character is talented and attractive, and anyone who doesn’t adore them is portrayed as mean, stupid, or evil. it’s common for them to be the smartest, even if this requires everyone else to act stupider than they should. out of place but awesome names are also frequent occurrences. they lead charmed lives, and any conflict or drama they are met with will be either overdone to the point of headache induction, or easily brushed aside.

while not always the case, mary sues are more often written by someone who is just starting out, either by someone who wrote their own personal power fantasy and expects everyone else to applaud them for it, or by someone using shortcuts to try and make their character impressive to others.

these characters are considered a mark of poor writing because they give too much favoritism to the character in question, and it comes off to readers as the author trying to artificially make their character the best around through shortcuts rather than well crafted development. their perfectness also tends to prevent the stories they’re in from developing suspense, making not only the character but the entire work they’re in boring.

while the term mary sue, along with the male version gary stu, has been applied to both fan characters and canon characters in published works, it is much more common to see used on fan characters. particularly those in fan fiction, which are most often female.
so this girl’s name is crystal roseblade, she grew up in the same orphanage as the protagonist and was a childhood friend of his, but he forgot about her, and now she’s come back out of nowhere as a huge pop idol who’s secretly the world’s greatest demon slayer? do you think you might be writing a mary sue?
mary sue

n.1

a negative reference to a female character
commonly used by beginning writers in their fan-fiction.

most times, the “mary-sue” is based upon the author.
she is unusually perfect and more advanced, also befriends
or becomes romantically entangled with the author’s favorite
character/characters from the series. because she is more
superior than the other characters in the work, she mainly
becomes the focus of the fan-fiction, thus ruining whatever
the fan-fiction was about.

as stated above, the name of the character referred to as
the “mary-sue” does not matter.

n.2

a person who acts smug or superior to a friend or comrade.
n.1

“c-ssandra was a mary-sue in dd’s version of harry potter vi.”

n.2

“don’t be a mary-sue, you w-nker!”
the most common type of mary sue is a character based an the author’s idealization of themself. furthermore, because the author is imagining a preferred version of themself, and because faults are overlooked in favor of optimization, a mary sue tends to have only superficial resemblance to the author, sharing similar likes/dislikes and a similar spirituality (when applicable), but objectifying things such as worldview and relationships. this type of mary sue is more common simply because it’s easier to write and is more appealing to the author. this mary sue is found in fanfics and original fiction alike. yes, mary sues abound even in professional writing.

the other type of mary sue is a character intended to be an ideal match for another, appearing almost exclusively in fanfics. in this case, “ideal match” means that the character’s positive traits are exaggerated to render impossible any compet-tion for the love interest. arguably more pernicious than the “self-idealization” type, the “ideal match” type by its very nature prevents compelling character or plot development, which the “self-ideal” mary sue may be able to avoid.
self-idealization: “that fic was ridiculous. i could overlook the atrocious grammar, but not such an obvious and annoying mary sue. what’s the point of releasing a story to the unsuspecting public if it’s only written for the masturbation of the author’s ego?”

ideal match: “it’s hard to find any other story that’s so dull as one that has an ideal match mary sue in it. what is there to be interested in if the pair never has any trials to overcome?”
used to negatively describe a female character, usually in a fanfiction (but sometimes in a tv show or movie,) that can be just be very annoying because they are too perfect or there aren’t any/many weaknesses in their personality. if they are a side character, they can sometimes take the spotlight. if they are a main character, it can make an uninteresting story. sometimes turn into a joke. also look at marty-stu.
this is a prime example of a mary-sue that i found on a writers page on fanfiction.

“mich-lle isabella fenton

danny phantom’s thirteen-year-old sister, who is two years younger than him. she is danielle phantom’s identical twin and nat wolff’s girlfriend. she is a harry potter style witch and a aquamarine style mermaid. mich-lle has dark brown hair and aquamarine blue eyes. she is an avatar style water and airbender. mich-lle is 25 percent twilight vampire, which explains why people think she looks perfect. her hair is elbow-length and she is 5’3. in her power form, she has a white bikini top, full white knee-length skirt, a diamond on the very center or her forehead near her eyes. in this form, mich-lle wears silver sandal heels. her hair had white streaks in it. two streaks of hair that are about 3 inches wide are curled and pinned at the center of the back of her head, towards the nape of her neck. mich-lle is also very good with arrows.

personality: sweet and innocent. very loving. dispite how it may seem like an act, mich-lle’s personality is pure. can be a bit protective at times, but only for the better.
aliases: lena yue”

doesn’t that character sound kinda annoying?

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