The Weird World Of Mary Sues

since the dawn of time humans have been creating original characters from the greek legends of old to famous creatures of folklore to the modern heroes that we watch and read about today we basically just love making up little guys i was super into art and writing when i was younger like a lot of kids are and i would spend my days filling notepads and sketchbooks with characters and stories that i made up in my head eventually i began to find online communities based around art and writing places like tumblr and deviantart and lots of niche old 2000s forums that are probably long dear by now and there i met tons of other creatives other people who loved making up stories and worlds and characters just like me but there was a rule on the internet back then an unspoken rule but a very important one nonetheless your character could be anyone they could be anything they could be made for any fandom but what they could not be was a mary sue but what exactly is a mary sue how did they come about why were there so many of them how cringey were the ones that i made and why was or rather still is there's so much hate towards them well today let's take a deep dive into the mary sue troupe and the huge impact that it's had on internet culture before we get into things i just want to give a huge thank you to caystify for sponsoring this video if you didn't know already casetify make really really really cool phone cases that look good and also actually protect your phone case by has hundreds of epic designs to fit any aesthetic the options are truly endless and new designs are constantly being added i actually got a new phone for the first time in like forever so i had to get some case by cases for it so uh i'll give you a little case-by-case tour the first one that i got is this dinosaur case it's super cool it has a bunch of like dinosaur skeletons on the back and then i got not one but two super cool cat cases i got one that's like pink and it has this little fairy cat on 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who is perfect and without flaw the rules of the universe and the story itself will bend and break around the mary sue to make them look as cool and capable as possible and they always have plot armor mary sues are exceptionally powerful beautiful and charismatic every character in the story instantly falls in love with them or wants to be their friend or is jealous of them because they're just that awesome it's common in fan fiction for mary says to be related to one of the main characters or villains i.e a daughter or a long-lost sibling in original fiction they might be a prophesized hero a magical being royalty or otherwise descended from someone powerful and important and cool all of the mary sue's traits are positive she's intelligent beautiful sweet and funny but also frighteningly powerful strong and skilled at magic and combat they tend also to have super op abilities they might be immortal or have rainbow laser vision or be out to wipe out entire armies with their super epic fighting skills as you might be able to tell from the name they tend most often to be female but male mary sues aka gary stews also do exist but we'll get to that later it's really common for the creators of these characters to worry that they've made a mary sue so they'll give her quote unquote flaws to balance her personality out these flaws are usually inconsequential and sometimes even actively endearing like quirky clumsiness suffering from her own success or beauty being adorably shy or feeling that her totally amazing stunning and awesome powers are a curse in short mary sues are super cool and super epic and super awesome and have no flaws and everybody loves them okay well maybe not everyone since the mary sue was one of the most widely hated and criticized tropes in all of fandom but again we'll get to that later for now let's take a look at the origins of the trope a mary sue history lesson if you will like many aspects of modern fandom culture the mary sue spawned from the star trek fandom of the 1970s more specifically a star trek fanzine called menagerie from an article in smithsonian magazine quote soon after paula smith and shannon ferrara launched one of the earliest star trek fanzines they started noticing a pattern to the submissions that they were receiving each began the same way a young woman would board the starship enterprise and because she was just so sweet and good and beautiful and cute smith recounts everybody would just fall all over her paula smith went on to publish a short parody story called a tricky's tale which follows lieutenant mary sue a satirical character made to poke fun at the unrealistic self-insert characters that they found in many submissions gee golly gosh gloriovsky thought mary sue as she stepped on the bridge of the enterprise here i am the youngest lieutenant in the fleet only 15 and a half years old captain kirk came up to her oh lieutenant i love you madly will you come to bed with me captain i'm not that kind of girl you're right and i respect you for it here take over the ship for a minute while i go get some coffee for us mr spot came onto the bridge what are you doing in the comm what are you doing in the command seat lieutenant that's my spark voice the captain told me to flawlessly logical i admire your mind captain kirk mr spock dr mccoy and mr scott beamed down with lieutenant mary sue to rigel 37 they were attacked by green androids and thrown into prison in a moment of weakness lieutenant mary sue revealed to mr spock that she too was half vulcan recovering quickly she sprung the lock with her hairpin and they all got away back to the ship but back on board dr mccoy and lieutenant mary sue found out that the men who had beamed down were seriously stricken by the jumping cold robbies murisu alisso while the four officers languished in the sick bay lieutenant mary sue ran the ship and ran it so well that she received the nobel peace prize the vulcan order of gallantry and the tralfamadorian order of good guy hood however the disease finally got her and she fell fatally ill in the sickbay as she breathed her last she was surrounded by captain kirk mr spock dogged mccoy and mr scott all weeping unashamedly at the loss of her beautiful youth in youthful beauty intelligence capability and all-around niceness even to this day her birthday is a national holiday on the enterprise despite just being a generic name for smith to give the comically perfect parody character the name of the young lieutenant became legendary within the phantom space and many began adopting mary sue as a term for unrealistically perfect characters a few years later the editors of menagerie further elaborated on the trope commenting quote mary sue stories the adventures of the youngest and smartest ever person to graduate from the academy and ever get a commission at such a tender age usually characterized by unprecedented skill in everything from art to zoology including karate and arm wrestling this character can also be found burrowing her way into the good graces slash hearts mind of one of the big three kirk spock and mccoy if not all three at once she saves the day by her wit and ability and if we are lucky has the good grace to die at the end being grieved by the entire ship paula smith and shannon ferraro continued to reference mary sue in their publications and according to fan law actually started reaching out to other authors and publications to call their characters mary sues when the authors retaliated the two would simply comment that well they were just trying to help them be better writers and make better characters and hold on to that thought because this is not the first time that you're gonna hear about that happening in this video the concept of the merisu grew alongside fandom itself as more and more fandoms cropped up and more and more people were dipping their toes into the world of writing and character creation mary sues became more prevalent mary sues have actually evolved a lot throughout the years the original sues from early fandom started out fairly basic but they became more and more elaborate as time went on and authors and artists tried to one-up each other after all the very premise of the mary seals that she's the most special unique and powerful character in the universe and as the mary sue market became more saturated the characters had to become increasingly ridiculous but mary sues aren't a one-size-fits-all thing they come in many different forms so let's go over a bullet point list of all of the main mirisu subspecies i made a tweet asking for people to share their real life mary sue ocs that they made as a kid so thankfully we'll have a lot of real life examples to go off the credit to each author artist will be included with each without further ado let's start with so when i say fancy you might be thinking like high fantasy like elves and sword fights and knights and dragons etc and while mary sues absolutely do exist in those types of stories we're not here to talk about that we're here to talk about the delightfully nonsense called 2010's tween fantasy genre a lot of young authors online will make up their own fantasy worlds for comics or role plays or whatever and they'll just throw every single concept or story element that they think is cool into it this is how you get half angel half demon cat hybrids runaway lab experiments with ice powers and pet unicorns and high school teens who can shapeshift into dragons and use a scythe as a weapon because everyone knows that the coolest weapon your character can use as a scythe and i know that for a fact because when i was 13 i had this roleplay character that was like a blue furry cat woman who could fly and was the most acrobatic fighter on earth and also had a scythe for some reason oh wait actually i do know the reason it's because it's cool as hell a perfect example of one of these extremely cool but nonsensical fantasy mary sues is this character who was quote a teenage girl who could turn into a purple wolf using a wolf fan necklace inspired by tokyo mimio also the most popular girl in school with a dark secret some other examples include kira an angel neko demon who was also royalty mystery a half angel half demon who was an outcast for having different coloured ears and miyuki a post-nuclear world mutant with cat dna who could change her left arm into any shape disregarding the laws of physics i love fantasy sues a lot because the authors just say you know what i think cats and wolves and angels and elemental powers and dragon taming and shape-shifting and crystals and emo bangs and ms paints default colors are all epic and i want them all in my story and i want them all on this one character honestly you gotta respect it let's move on too snarky rude and sarcastic itchy mary sues will actively go out of their way to be [ __ ] yet somehow still have the entire cast fawning over them and adoration ichi sues are sarcastic brooding mysterious hot-headed and very very emo and are usually treated like god's gift to mankind even if in reality they'd be extremely unlikable people a lot of people shared with me that they used to write their characters this way and i related so much when i was a kid all of my characters used to be these like snappy comeback like quirky sarcastic rude not like other girls girls and i thought it was really cool that pro tip it wasn't ichi sews are usually pretty easy to spot dark brown or black bangs covering one eye as a staple black red or purple color schemes are common and like fantasy sue's edgy sue's are often wolf demon or dragon hybrids with devastating powers because they're edgy and hashtag deep these powers are often considered a curse and may tie into their dark sad backstory these characters almost never have parents because as every young author knows the single most easy way to give a character the illusion of depth is to give them a set i accidentally killed my parents as a baby because i was so powerful backstory plus as a bonus there were no stinky parents to get in the way of your cool teen character going on magical adventures by themselves for months or years at a time two birds one stone or should i say two black and magenta phoenixes that have shadow powers one amethyst that makes me immortal some examples of itchy mary sues include this character who was quote a self-insert creepypasta from like 2012. she was the daughter of the grim reaper and was the most powerful reaper of all time she also had literally every kind of superpower all at the age of 12 she was also six feet tall queen luna half wolf half dragon demon queen primarily black and purple wolf started out as the five nights at freddy's oc could do anything with magic if i recall correctly the most mary sue to have ever mary sued her name was angelica she's a fallen angel that's super cool and badass always sarcastic and mean yet so kind with the people she cares about literally had any power that the plot called for of course she's iconic to be honest animal jam oc who is a black wolf dragon she was the leader of spirit clan and super mysterious lived in the lost temple of zeos and had allegiances with the phantoms now let's take a look at whether it's steven universe pokemon warrior cat sonic undertale five nights at freddy's or uh seinfeld mirri sues a ubiquitous within online fandoms after all the original mirisu herself was a star trek fan character fan zoos are usually pretty diverse and differ depending on the character in the fandom but if i had to give a list of common fan sue traits i would say a mirror series usually serve as self inserts that allow authors to ship themselves with the canon characters so they'll often be dating one or more of the main characters the characters that aren't in love with them will either be jealous of how awesome they are or will spend the entire story complementing them and hyping up their epic skills b they'll be more powerful than all of the main cast combined and will shock everyone with their strength and skill c they'll break the rules and status quo of their given universe for example a harry potter or c will be part of a secret super powerful house called blood claw and they'll have a pet unicorn or if they're a warrior cat soc they'll be part of a secret clan of loners with shadow powers called death clan it's rare to see a mary sue have a regular job or be part of any of the pre-existing canon factions of their story instead the author will make up a super cool and edgy faction created specifically for them to accentuate how special and gifted they are d they'll always stand out if everyone else in the story has a plain beige school uniform theirs will be neon blue and black if everyone else gets a simple sword they'll be given a hot pink katana with flames on it if everyone else can shapeshift into a different type of bird they'll be able to turn into a dragon like i said your mileage for these really varies depending on the fandom and the character but most fan sews have at least one or two of these here are some great examples of those types of characters had a warrior cat who had black fur that glowed purple in the light header and green eyes she mastered the killing blow at the age of three moons was made a warrior about four moons before her siblings and was exiled from shadowclan for being too dangerous a thousand cringe memories just flashed before my eyes this was my x-men evolution fan character ebenita i mean nightshade if i recall correctly she was venomous and could eat any poison no problem super edgy shed this is thunderstar my first warrior cat's oc she had two special powers the power to turn into a lion and the power to heal wounds and inflict damage upon the attacker firestar and sandstorm were her parents and she becomes leader because of course she does vitalini the wolf hedgehog bear hybrid who is shadow's long lost sister a rock star and knuckles sunderer girlfriend next up we have clone sues also known as copykatsu's are a sub-genre of fan character mary sues they're basically carbon copies of pre-existing fictional characters with a few details changed often to make them cooler slash more powerful slash more like the author there are two types of clone sues overpowered descendants and quote unquote totally unrelated characters for an example of an overpowered descendant you might have daniella targaryen daughter of daenerys targaryen she looks just like her mom except her hair is blue and 10 feet long and she has pink eyes and dragon wings and she has 12 dragons instead of just three as another example twitter user at love my tarantula wrote quote when i was in elementary school i had a sonic oc named frieza the hedgehog who was sonic's cousin and he had stupidly op ice powers and he was also the leader of a rock band and also he was in a relationship with amy rose user at sauer cherry scones wrote meet shadowpelt the angsty scourge tiger star warrior oc ripoff born as a runt he was bullied he wanted to be a leader brother became deputy first he killed brother he became deputy he tries to overthrow leader he is kicked out and takes over shadow clan this oc definitely also fits the ijisu label as well you get the point basically someone sees a character they think is cool yoinks their personality and or appearance gives them a new name and makes them a daughter slash brother slash long lost second cousin-in-law to explain the similarities for an example of a totally unrelated character wink wink nudge nudge you might have this character that i made as a kid i can't remember her name but what i do remember is that she was a survivalist hashtag girlboss teenager that lived in a dystopian world where every teen was magically transported into a deadly arena to complete trials and face off against other teens and of course she was the most skilled archer in the entire world and also had yellow eyes if you'd asked me at the time izzy did you just steal the character of katniss everdeen but give her yellow eyes i would have sworn up and down that this was in a 100 original character and story donut steel but i would have been lying of course this was just a teen dystopian mary sue katniss everdeen clone and a perfect example of the totally unrelated character trope let's move on to it's a well-known fact that i'll use literally any excuse to talk about my little pony on this channel so yeah you know you should have seen this coming my little sues are most often alicorns the rarest type of pony in the show having both wings and a horn they're usually princesses or royalty of some kind sometimes directly related to celestia luna cadence or twilight and often having some super op magic or ability while sickly sweet pastel cupcake rainbow alicorn goddesses were pretty common i think eg black and red radioactive neon demons were even more common the mlp fandom loved their edgy mary sues the most infamous example of this is princess neon boom an oc owned by the deviant user nicomelo neon boom is this wonderfully garish black rainbow neon celestia recolor with knee-high converse and a rainbow horn and black cheetah print everywhere and i love her so much back in the day though neon boom was one of the most infamous ocs within the fandom frequently shared around various sites for bronies to make fun of and make cruel comments about look at any my little pony oc blog or how to and there's a decent chance neon boom will be there as an example of what not to do though despite this many more black and white neon rainbow alicorns would come after her seriously these black neon rainbow ocs were absolutely everywhere back in the day if you were in the fandom back then you know exactly what i'm talking about as a side note for all you people in the comments i do not want to see any neon boom slander here this character is part of brony history and must be protected at all costs being a young brony slash pigger sister in the fandom at a young age i made my fair share of mary sues i had this one oc who was an alicorn fox hybrid with 12 tails and another who i basically invented because i was jealous of twilight sparkle becoming an alicorn i made this character called swirl star who was also a purple alicorn and was basically just a better cooler version of twilight and i would always draw the main characters telling her how cool she was and twilight would be like off in the corner seething about it and for those asking no i don't particularly want to drill down into the psychological implications of child me being jealous of a literal animated horse so you know let's just not go there i mean i don't like to brag but i consider myself somewhat of an authority on the whole topic given that at the ripe old age of 13 i wrote a book on wattpad about how to make a good my little pony oc and i had a lot to say about mary sue's a quote if you're wanting to use your oc to roleplay then you'll need to stay within the guidelines of the fandom my little pony personality rules number one mary sueism avoid this at all costs because any beauty crystal moon princess alicorn element of amazing will be immediately dismissed as a joko see okay i have a huge rant to get out about this don't make your pony an alicorn because you can't decide on a race or because you want them to be cool in the world of my little pony friendship is magic alicorns are always royal or have some significance alicorns are a big deal so if a pony was to be born when they would be famous there are no civilian alicorns okay your alicorn can't go under the radar in any town full stop and it's so needless there are so many dj alicorns i'm not even kidding go on to google images and look up mlp djoc and i swear you will find more than one you may have noticed that i did a complete 180 from making mary sue's on the rig to hating them with a burning passion and condescending to anyone who would listen about how trash they were and hold on to that thought we'll come back to it later you may have also noticed that was extremely cringe and yes yes it was those little excerpts i just read up there a butter taste of how annoying i was at that age anyway let's take a look at a couple of other examples of my little pony mary sues i took this design and made it my own character her name was diamond rose and alicorn who was celestia's sister and was pretty much fluttershy but exaggerate her personality times 10. she was part of the main sex and acted like a baby because i thought it was cute this is midnight shadow he's half demon and the husband and baby daddy of princess luna from mlp he has a tragic past has supernatural abilities and has many many transformations i never knew how to draw him so i just did him in the official mlp pony maker for facebook her name was goddess omega day breakdown and was best friends with princess twilight and married to kai from ninjago this character is one of my favorites that i've seen like ever i also love the little speech bubble that just says we are crystallized yay white unicorn mlp oc with black and red spiky hair and red eyes who didn't want friends because she can turn into a dragon and later became friends with the main sex the worst thing is that i can identify exactly where that spiky hair came from it came from general zoy's pony crater the bane of every 2010's brony's existence i made so many terrible characters in that thing anyway enough ranting about ponies let's move on to something a bit more palatable furries as i'm sure you know by this point furries are very much a thing online since the dawn of the internet the anthropomorphic animal community has been steadily growing in number with so many internet denizens discovering and joining the furry community over the years which is basically built on the idea of original characters and role play they were bound to be a few mary sues they even got their own name within the furry fandom sparkle dogs sparkle dogs are a furry subtype of mary sue best known for their bright neon fur colors unnatural clashing patterns and magical slush mythical features like wings spikes unicorn horns magical tails etc sparkle dogs are actually pretty heavily linked to 2000 and 2010 emo and scene culture back then it was super common to see emo teens making edgy sparkle dog ocs with seen here on raccoon tails or side swept banks often accompanied by various hot topic accessories most types of mary sues we've covered have over the top or fantastical designs but sparkle dogs are by far the most visually intense form of sue characterized by their eye-bleeding rgb colours clashing nonsensical patterns and textures and tons of tiny intricate accessories basically if you handed a sparkle dog to an animator they'd tell you to jump off a cliff pop culture mary sues are interesting not because they're particularly over the top or ostentatious in fact compared to a lot of other mirisu types we've covered they're pretty tame but they're interesting because they bring mirisu discourse into the public light see for a time mirisu's were a fairly terminally online concept most people who knew the ins and outs of the trope and actively engage with it grew up on old writing forums or spent most of their time online and in phantom spaces but then maybe one day some character comes along from a big movie or franchise and a few people online accuse them of being mary sues and then maybe a few publications catch wind of that and then suddenly every man and his dog on the internet knows what a mary sue is two really big cases of pop culture sue's blowing up so much that they usher mary sue discourse into the public light are bella swann from stephanie mayer's twilight series and ray skywalker from star wars back in 2008 to 2012 twilight was pop culture from team edward vs team jacob debates to which twilight vampire eu quizzes to vampire merch lining the walls of every hot topic in sight to twilight themed water bottles it truly was the moment and while it was adored by hundreds and thousands of tweens across the globe it was hated just as passionately by its many many detractors sparkly vampire memes jokes about the actors in their wooden performances and most prevalent of all complaints that bella swan was a mary sue in both the books and the movies bella immediately attracts a large group of adoring friends despite her lack of charisma she has the natural ability to repel the mental powers of vampires and throughout the course of the story she manages to knit herself a powerful sexy immortal vampire boyfriend who then turns her into a powerful immortal vampire and they have a powerful immortal vampire daughter she's a classic example of a not like other girls mary sue she's openly uninterested in fashion or pop culture or her female friends and she's described as unconventionally attractive despite the fact that she spends most of the series swanning around pun intended looking hot and being cool rey star wars on the other hand is a far more modern example of a character that's been dubbed in mary sue by the masses after the third star wars trilogy was released featuring daisy ridley as the character ray skywalker there were tons of mirisu accusations levelled at the character rant post began to flood twitter and read it those youtubers who released like 10 videos a day complaining about every new movie release while milking the [ __ ] out of it and memes were posted on mass making fun of rey and her merry suisim according to a blog post by author christopher john lindsay ray fit the trope because among other things she was an extremely skilled fighter despite her inexperience she had special powers that allowed her to overcome even the toughest of enemies and she exhibited knowledge and prowess and many skills he also wrote quote rey is an unrealistic character because she achieves success too easily in the real world women must work just as hard as men to be successful women can achieve the same or even greater things as men but not what they have less experience i like the or even greater in brackets women achieving the same things as men i can believe but greater save it for the brackets pal there have been countless articles arguing back and forth over whether rey's 70 billion dollar franchise skywalker is in mary sue or not some claim that she's the suest of the sus and an example of a poorly written character while others vehemently defend her staunchly opposed to the idea that she fits the trip at all and naturally all of this media coverage brought the question into the public light so much so that it transformed from star wars discourse into just mary sue discourse as a final example let's take a look at ebony darkness dementia raven way from the infamous harry potter fan fiction maya mortal hi my name is ebony darmness dementia ravenway and i have long ebony black hair that's how i got my name with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and i see blue eyes like limped tears and a lot of people tell me i look like amy lee author's note if you don't know who she is get the hell out of here i'm not related to gerard way but i wish i was because he's a major [ __ ] hottie i'm a vampire but my teeth are straight and white i have pale white skin i'm also a witch and i go to a magic school called hogwarts in england where i'm in the 7th year i'm 17. i'm a goth in case you couldn't tell and i wear mostly black i love hot topic and buy all my clothes from there the iconic 2006 fanfic went viral for being so bad it was good and the widespread mockery made ebony darkness to meet to raven way who as a side note also dated draco end quote unquote vampire potter into a bonafide pop culture mary sue to give you an idea of just how popular my immortal was even beyond the thousands of blog posts and videos and articles about it i have a real life anecdote when i was younger my uncle came from overseas to visit us and he had literally printed out the entire book of my immortal for my dad and my aunt to read because quote you won't believe how bad this is neither he or my dad were particularly online people and i doubt they knew much about fan fiction let alone what a mary sue was but here they were exposed to it that's how big my immortal was it was turning innocent dads and uncles into harry potter mary sue fanfic consumers the point is despite how ridiculous it may seem maya model and ebony darkness dementia ravenway were pretty instrumental in introducing the general public to the concept of the mary sue and this leads us nicely into the next section of this video because well now it's easy for us to look back with nostalgia and even fondness for these mary sues you can't fully understand the trope without looking at the tremendous backlash that it received back in the day and what i like to call the anti-mary sue movement okay so you know how early we were talking about that star trek fanzine and the mary suffec and how the authors started actually reaching out to people to accuse their characters of being mary sues and you know how i said that was a thing we were going to come back to well we're coming back to it much like the original star trek fanzine editors writers and artists online began to see patterns and the kind of characters that people were making especially within fandom spaces they were super hot and had all the other characters falling all over them they were smart and strong and they were able to defeat armies and destroy planets and bring down governments with an elegant flick of the wrist or a rather flick of the scythe and this pissed a lot of people off these characters flew in the face of every conventional rule of character creation they were unfairly overpowered they were clearly just over shippy self-inserts and it could not stand the war on mary sue's had begun one of the most popular ways for writers and artists to express their anti-mary sue views was by creating intentionally ridiculous and satirical parody suits in the same vein as lieutenant mirisu from the original tricky tale fanfic they were always these neon rainbow messes with a hundred wings and layers of clashing accessories and given every positive personality trait skill and power in the entire world because a lot of mary sues were made by kids and were drawn in ems paint or made using deviantart bases these parody suits would often be drawn poorly on purpose and have tons of bad grammar similarly as a form of anti-mary sue protest people would make these comparison memes which were almost exactly like those tumblr not like other girl pictures except it was basically just not like other ocs they do a side by side comparison of a quote unquote normal character which was often their own character next to an overblown parody mary sue meant to prove how ridiculous mary sues were and how great their character was these pictures also served as guides on the what to do and what not to do as of character creation and design and were even shared around as tutorials but it didn't stop at parodies once people learned what mary sues were they saw them everywhere and they made it their sovereign duty to stamp them all out of existence and if you were there back in the trenches of the 2010s you know just how bad it got kids would post their oc's on deviantart and wake up to comments flooded with insults and accusations that the character was a mary sue if someone posted a mary sue character on a forum or in a roleplay group they were liable to be banned or even removed from the group entirely it got to the point where people made tumblr blogs and wattpad books dedicated to making fun of mirisu characters that they found online just finding random ocs on google images and putting them on blast for their large audiences to laugh and jeer at in most cases the artists behind these ocs wouldn't find out that hundreds of people had been making fun of them until someone reached out to them and actually told them some mary sue cringe vlogs began to brand themselves in a more constructive way claiming that their goal was to help people make better ocs they allowed people to submit their own characters for review as showcased by blogs like the mary sue rehab center and the mary sue review as well as warped books like mary sue oc reviews mary sue test how not to marry sue and more with descriptions like what pet is on the brink of war slowly but surely an army is forming one based on ignorance pride and rainbows an army of mary sues join our efforts to combat the ever-growing ranks of the mary sue's by submitting euro c for review if we work together we can win this war one mary sue conversion at a time prepare to have your dream crushed and hearts broken by the way i know it seems kind of random that a lot of this went down on what part of all places you know most people think of wattpad as where kids post their one direction fanfics but as someone who used to use the site a lot it had a pretty bustling art community these kinds of how-to books were actually super common man that site is crazy wattpad really needs its own video sometime all of these user run criticism blogs were all well and good but what if you didn't have time to wait for a response you needed to know whether your oc frost dragon thistle shadow knight was in mirisu right now damn it well to solve this issue several quizzes and tests were created which allowed writers to answer a list of questions about their character and get an instant result again if you're like me and we're in the trenches of this mary sue war in the 2010s you'll get flashbacks when i mention the website springhole.net springhold.net had arguably the most comprehensive and most popular mary sue test online the universal mary sue litmus test the test asks questions such as is your character's name taken deliberately from a character or another fandom that you like is your character's name very unusual for your character's place and situation eg a medieval english princess named sakura or raven is anyone including you jealous of your character's good looks does your character have a natural eye coloration not normally found in zur race or species note alexandria's genesis is not real hey how many animals does your character keep is said animal a wolf bird of prey big cat or mythical creature does your character have the ability to shapeshift does your character alone use a weapon that is magical or has some sort of other unique properties or is unusually ornate did you feel that this test insulted or attacked you or your character so far according to the owner of springhole.net this test is essentially what put the website on the map and it was so widely used that it became a staple on writing and character creation blogs all across the web often one of the first tips that authors would give was to test your characters using the universal mary sue litmus test because there was no sin worse than having your character be one this hyper-vigilant anti-mary sue culture is what i personally believe fit into a lot of the cringe culture of the late 2010s the kind of culture that spawned hundreds of youtube channels dedicated to taking kids art and animations and putting them to cringe compilations i mentioned earlier how i went from making mary sues regularly to literally writing a book about how much i hated them and i'm not the only one who went through this sort of pipeline not only were creatives being bombarded with anti-mary sue hate videos and how-to guides in a hundred plus christian litmus tests but there were throngs of fellow creatives eagerly waiting to police any character that they came across the internet had made it clear that mary sues were dumb and terrible and so were the people that made them and fearful that one day we'd see our own characters on a terrible oc tumblr blog we became deathly afraid of making them so we unrainbowed our characters we took away all of their cool abilities and we gave them regular names and backstories but in our desperate efforts to not make mary sues we ended up creating another form of sue a soother likes we'd never seen before the anti-sioux antisous are typically made by people who are so afraid of accidentally making their character a mirror so that they instead make a bland and pointless plank of wood devoid of any positive traits at all they're typically described as pathetic ugly losers who can't do anything right and have zero positive traits though in typical mary surfacing they're usually drawn looking like supermodels anyway the authors get scared that giving them even one positive trait might suddenly turn them into a sue so they're either given no personality at all or an actively offensive evil and irredeemable one the logic is there by giving them every possible horrible trait it will ensure that they can never become a sue but since they're basically just reverse mirisu's they're still considered to be on the sioux spectrum a lot of characters back in the day went from neon fox kitsune princesses to plain boring planks of wood with no personality over time as people caught wind of the anti-suit trope they began to call that out as well it became a balancing act you couldn't make your character too brightly coloured or skilled at anything but you also had to make them just interesting enough so they weren't considered a boring try-hard anti-suit unfortunately for many artists and writers online it really sucked the fun out of creating characters and worlds at that point it was just unnecessarily stressful and a lot of young creatives kind of just started drifting away from art and writing because of it which really sucks but the big question really is why did this all happen why did mary sue's rise to prominence and why were they met with such hatred and vitriol it's a complex and nuanced topic so let's discuss the simple answer to the question why do mary sues exist is basically well just because they're fun they're usually but not exclusively made by kids and are often self-inserts allowing the author to ship themselves with the characters or imagine they're the super cool hero that all of their favorite characters love and while yes they can be poorly written and goofy and dare i say it a bit cringe which i can say with confidence because my childhood mary sues were all three of those things is there really anything wrong with that again speaking from experience a lot of marisu's were created by kids from a place of frustration you're growing up and realizing that the world isn't fair it can be scary a lot of things are out of your control and maybe imagining yourself as lieutenant mary sue the coolest and most perfect character to ever have lived is empowering your tweens and early teen years are also just a really hard time in general school sucks it can be hard to fit in and make friends and it's easy to feel isolated and weird writing a character who's also an isolated friendless teenager but can secretly turn into a purple dragon wolf with angel wings and crystal powers is again empowering and can help you cope and make sense of things irl but on the other hand a lot of mary sues don't exist for any deeper reason they just exist because the author thought they were cool and they wanted to have fun making something and well that's fine too mary sues are cool and fun they're funny and bright and over the top they're basically just big amalgamations of everything the author or artist thinks is cool and there's something really great about that art doesn't always have to be well thought out and intricately crafted and perfectly plotted and planned art doesn't even have to be good artists just aren't sometimes it's fun when art is just someone having fun and making something silly and weird and self-indulgent and i don't even really blame the people who are running these mary sue blogs or making posts and guides about it or making videos because well a lot of them were kids and they were just following the popular trends at the time it's the same reason that i went from making mary sues to being super afraid of making them too actively hating them because i saw a lot of cool creators and artists that i liked doing the same thing and well i just hopped on the bandwagon we were all so caught up in the silly arbitrary rules in the idea of quote unquote good versus bad characters that we didn't think well even if the character is bad what's wrong with that sometimes when someone writes a story or creates a piece of art or makes a character the goal isn't for it to be good the goal is to just have fun and enjoy the process and create something special to them and something that's terribly written and shortly drawn and totally call that the author enjoyed making still holds value and is an important piece of art in my opinion i know it's not an opinion that everyone holds and that's fine but i think there's a catharsis to embracing cringe and accepting that sometimes making saturated ms paint my little pony or sonico sees with every power in the universe is fun i think more people should make self-indulgent overpowered mary sue ocs i hope all the marvel characters are replaced with black neon rainbow dj alicorns and then you'll all be sorry [Music] but me ranting about how much i love mary sue's aside it's also worth discussing the actual discourse that has surrounded the term mary sue in recent years there's this thing that happens on the internet sometimes where a bunch of people will discover a hot new term and start using it really liberally without understanding the history or the context behind it to the point where it goes from a word that once had meaning to a pointless internet buzzword and yeah that's pretty much what happened with the term mary sue after the popularization of the terminal of the public discourse that followed characters no longer had to be an rgb neko wolf demon goddess with eight wings and a fox tale who has every elemental power in the world now it was just powerful characters or just popular characters or dare i say it just a female characters because it's important to note that while male mary sues aka gary stews do exist the trope was built off of female characters and has always been heavily associated with women and fandom the once highly specific definition of mirisu had begun to widen and become more vague to the point where critics could use the term for pretty much any character they didn't like especially if they were female and this isn't just like a modern internet problem this problem has existed since the very inception of the trope itself all the way back at the start of this video we discussed a star trek fanzine and the authors who popularized the term mary sue and what a lot of authors in the fandom soon came to find out was that in a post mary sue world every female character they made was accused of fitting into the trobe during a 1987 enterprising women panel at clippercon one author was quoted as saying every time i've tried to put a woman in any story i've ever written everyone immediately says this is a mary sue the automatic reaction that you're going to get is that's a mary sue despite the authors of the original parody fake making statements clarifying that their intentions weren't to put down inspiring stories about female characters it was too late and to this day the trip has been used to do just that in a 2019 warroni article writer and filmmaker julia farager writes quote mary sue is in a cleverly developed critical term it's an excuse for sexism and used by whiny fanboys who aren't happy that women have power and agency characters like harry potter clark ken and james bond haven't faced tirades from fans for being mary sues even though they are highly powered characters who always save the day and lack obvious flaws on the other side you have those who wholeheartedly disagree with the idea of the mary sue as a sexist trope and feel that it's hashtag woke culture gone mad please guys get out of the feminist tupper and see that people criticize gary stews everywhere have you heard about superman or kirito or batman or aragon nice to see you yet again having those double standards because sure no one hates male characters and it's true of course that there have been plenty of male characters who have been criticized as being too cool too perfect and too overpowered but critics have argued that these characters are more likely to be celebrated for these qualities and are less likely to be criticized using the mary sue label they argue that the term mirisu is at best an unhelpful and vague criticism and at worst wielded to dismiss and denigrate female characters for just taking up space and media whether you believe that's a valid criticism or just feminist topper is really up to you i'm not here to change hearts and minds but it's still an interesting conversation and pretty important to the history and legacy of the trope in the wake of these discussions about the impact and potential harm of the mary sue trope many people have changed their viewpoints and even apologized for their participation in early mary sue discourse as we covered before the original authors of menagerie stated that they didn't want people to use the mirosu tropes so liberally to insult female characters in fandom spaces the original author of the mary sue litmus test an iconic staple of online character creation and one of if not the most popular and well-known websites about the trope has since disavowed both the test and the term mary sue quote i am no longer supporting this test nor do i support using the term mary sue to describe any character for any reason the test is simply here for archival purposes and to provide this message to anyone who follows a link to this page instead of using it please go to does my character work okay how to tell for yourself if you really really really want to use this test for some reason please at least stop using the term mary sue there are far better ways to talk about characters who just don't work for one reason or another than using a term that's more often than not just used to tear down female characters simply for having a prominent active role in a story similarly many anti-mary sue blogs on tumblr wattpad and various forums have since apologised for their actions the author of a popular tumblr blog called mary sue facepalm recently updated their blog for the first time in several years with a post titled this blog should have never been made i would like to say from the bottom of my heart that i am sorry to everyone who i demean talk down to and knowingly hurt running this blog is one of my deepest regrets i'm a shame that this is part of my past running this blog is one of my deepest regrets i'm a shame that this is part of my past it's really great to see a lot of these old anti-mary sue bloggers changing their minds and growing over time it shows a lot of maturity and i really respect them for it again while it doesn't negate the harm done it is still worth keeping in mind that a lot of these bloggers were also just kids at the time so this leads us to our final question are mary sue still a thing and is it even okay to use the term mary sue anymore well the answer really depends on your personal preferences and beliefs on the topic some use the word as a catch-all term for overpowered or badly written characters or even just characters they don't like while others are opposed to the term and encourage people to remove it from their vocabulary altogether and then there are others like me who fall somewhere in the middle the term has been misused a lot over the years and i don't think it's a particularly helpful piece of criticism people should be free to criticize the media they consume whether it be the stories or the worlds or the characters and i think it's important that people be allowed to do that not everyone likes their media or their franchises or their stories to have mary sue characters and they should be able to express that but these articles that are just like uh insert character here is a huge mary sue here's why just end up generating tons of arguments and infighting between fans and none of it actually drills down into the characters flaws or how they could be better written so yeah i think that authors and journalists and critics deciding to remove mary sue from their handy list of buzzwords isn't the worst thing ever but on the other hand i kind of love mary sue's i look back at all of mine with a lot of fondness and even though i can appreciate now how goofy they are that's kind of why i love them like i said earlier i don't think people should be ashamed of making them and i don't think mary sue should be a bad word or an insult rainbow laser eyed super gods sparkle dogs are fun cool teenage girls who date sparkly robot patterns and vampires are fun sonic oceans with godly powers are fun as i've grown up and honestly especially as i've been doing this channel i've found more and more that one of the most wonderful things you can do is just embrace your cringe that's why i love these types of characters they're just everything the author likes and thinks is cool and they exist in spite of all the unwritten internet rules about what's cringe and what's not here's a cool little secret i've learned there aren't any rules so grab your ms paint grab your deviant bass grab every single color visible to the human eye plus some that probably don't even exist yet take everything that makes you happy and everything you think looks cool and every weird niche interest you have and make that mary sue i promise that society and the concept of art as we know it isn't going to collapse if you do definitely let me know about your characters in the comments honestly one of my favorite things is hearing about people's old mary sue characters and like all of the crazy powers and abilities and stuff that they had it's honestly so much fun to me looking back at these kind of things i had a blast like going over all my old characters and looking at other people's characters for this video so please if you had any mary sue characters please share them below um the more detail the better i want to see all those stunning overpowered wonderful badass characters also i'm really curious to hear from people who are sort of in the same like internet communities and spaces as i was as a kid um if you you know use the mary sue litmus test if you heard any advice about mary sue's or even you know wrote your own advice um yeah just generally the whole culture around them back at that time is super interesting to me and i'm really curious to hear um anyone's you know first-hand experience of that time thank you guys so much for watching this video i really appreciate it um this video is actually quite hard to make um i struggle with the script because i wanted to do it justice because mary sues are a topic that i'm very passionate about i wanted to make sure that i got it completely right um and got out everything i wanted to say so um yeah i'm really glad that it's done and i'm so glad that it's out and i really hope that you like it um if there are any things that i like forgot if there are any takes or perspectives that i didn't include that you want to share definitely let me know um just the whole culture around that time is super interesting to me and yeah i really want to hear everyone's perspectives and everything like that again thank you so much for watching i really appreciate it um thank you guys for just supporting the channel and watching what i make and leaving comments and just everything i appreciate you guys so much and yeah i really hope you enjoyed this video and i hope to see you in the next one bye a huge thank you to my girl food overlords over on patreon sheriff whiskey xavier rahul she's sell simpson group gundersen simon katrina likes 5v stuff dozo blind red meth the furby librarian met lrj greenpean dragon michelle olson astrian vortex electro kitten joe bradshaw jordan nielsen john leech jorge k cruz helm hamburger hand kimono my gyro fitsy palm dana homegardner arcantalis jesse chisholm charlie b brianna robinson blue mayfield din meadow and doug thank you guys so much for supporting me it means the world to me if you want to join these guys over on patreon head to the link in the description and yeah i appreciate you guys thank you as always and i really hope to see you in the next one bye

Channel: Izzzyzzz

Views: 2,298,184

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Id: XMBEK-PPOsI

Length: 48min 34sec (2914 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 02 2022