Alright, what the f@#% is a "Mary Sue"? *sound of kaijus fighting* Seriously, the term gets thrown all over the goddamn place, but what does it mean? Nobody can agree! Some people say a Mary Sue is any character who's "unrealistically heroic and/or powerful", but that definition also covers basically every hero, so clearly it's too broad. Sometimes it's restricted to "author inserts", but there's nothing stopping a writer from writing a perfectly harmless author avatar into the story. Iconic hero Luke Skywalker has been explicitly confirmed to be heavily based on George Lucas himself ...if this didn't already give it away. Mark Hamill has even gone on record to say that when he was stumped on how to play a scene, he'd just default to whatever Lucas would do, and Lucas would love it! But obviously, I mean, Luke is kind of a whiny twerp, it runs in the Skywalker family, but he doesn't feel like a Mary Sue! I mean, to me. I also liked Rey, so maybe my judgement on Star Wars protagonists shouldn't be treated as unbiased, but still! It seems like any established definition ropes in too many characters that we don't want it to apply to. So how do we unravel the mystery of the Mary Sue? Who is she? Well, we should probably start at the beginning. Let's indulge in a little bit of Fandom Archeology and travel all the way back to 1973. Mary Sue was coined as a parody/dissection of this trope in its original form. She was a comically over-the-top self-insert character in a Star Trek fanzine and I'd summarize, but it would be easier to just read the first paragraph. "Gee, golly, gosh, gloriosky," thought Mary Sue as she stepped on the bridge of the Enterprise. "Here I am, the youngest lieutenant in the fleet - only fifteen 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 am 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. Spock came onto the bridge. "What are you doing in the command seat, Lieutenant?" "The Captain told me to." "Flawlessly logical." "I admire your mind." See, at the time, THIS was a lot of what fanfiction was. People wanted to ride along with all these wacky adventures, which, you know - fair. So they drop a character into the world and wishfullfill the hell out of it. Our buddy Mary Sue is gorgeous, talented and desired and/or respected by everybody. She's better than everyone at what they do, but nobody's mad about it because she's just so amazing. But none of that is why we dislike her. No, we find her annoying because the story is empty. This version of Mary Sue takes the spotlight and primadonnas her way through an otherwise fascinating fictional universe. This is just pure wish-fulfillment. She's a backstory-less bundle of positive character traits with nothing behind the eyes and the story's no fun unless you like pretending to be her, because the story is entirely centered on people reaffirming how great she is. Now, this was the Gen 1 Mary Sue, The original, shameless Girls-Just-Want-To-Have-Fun fic insert And honestly, I'm not going to complain about her. (Accurate representation of YouTube comments) She's a FANFIC character. People write fanfic for FUN. And if your first Original Character happens to be you with better hair, then whatever, man, you do you. But Gen 1 Mary Sue understandably got a lot of backlash. She was accused of being too perfect, too flawless, too good - of stealing the spotlight from the real heroes, which are all understandable complaints. But this gave rise to the second generation of Mary Sues, where some subdivision happened. See, those criticisms landed. People wanted to avoid the scorn that came with writing a Mary Sue, so surface attempts were made to change these characters in ways that violated the Gen 1 complaints. "This character can't be a Mary Sue - see, she's not perfect, because she's actually a huge asshole!" "This one can't be a Mary Sue because he's the villain!" "This one's not an original character, they're repurposed from the original source material," "so they can't possibly be a Mary Sue!" Now this gave rise to the substrings of Jerk Sue, Villain Sue, and Possession Sue respectively; all attempts to subvert the image of the Mary Sue without removing the fundamental Sue-ness. The Jerk Sue would be a colossal dickhead but everyone that cares about them would love them anyway; the Possession Sue would basically rewrite an existing character to match with what the author wanted them to be, often pulling them pretty far out of character in the process; the Villain Sue was actually pretty easy to get away with because villains are already often over-the-top, cooler than the heroes, and crazy flamboyant, not to mention just plain fun to play. Now there are a ton of other Gen 2 strings, but they all have one thing in common; the story still only exists to serve the image of the character, just like it did the Gen 1 Sue. No matter the skin, the Mary Sue makes the story boring around them. A story with the Sue as its core is written as though the Sue is at the center of the universe. We're supposed to accept at face value that they're the most interesting, most important character in the story, because that's the starting point of their character. Not their backstory, not their motivations, just how invested we're supposed to be. And I think, fundamentally, that's what makes a Sue, a Sue. It's not something that exists on the level of a character trait, but on the story level; it's how the plot flows around them. The error is that the author starts in the premise that this character is by default the best character; not the most paragon, not the most powerful, but the best, the one everyone sees themselves in; or at the very least, the one everyone wants to pay attention to. And that's the problem. When you start from that premise, you forget to write the character in a way that draws us in. When you start with the idea that of course the character is the center of attention, we, the audience won't ever actually internalize why they should be the center of attention. It's writing with a blind spot. And that blind spot isn't going to be filled - and that pulls us out of the story. And this is the problem the transcends fanfic and starts to enter the world of original writing. Any time the writer is too busy squeeing over a character to establish why we should care about them, it ends up feeling a little too self-congratulatory. But the problem doesn't stop there - the
Mary Sue distorts the world around them, changing the way characters act and
reality works to put the focus on them. The Mary Sue is the center of attention
at the expense of basically everything else. And this isn't always positive in-story. The Sympathetic-Sue archetype is the character who the universe conspires to make miserable, just like Gen. 1 Mary Sue, the character the universe conspires to make look good. The Mary Sue, in any of her forms, is the center of everything, and that's not really going to be a compelling read-- no matter how interesting her character is. And it's usually not that interesting. It takes more than a cartoonishly traumatic backstory and a laundry list of positive traits to make a character compelling. Now, to be clear: there are stories with a character at their center where the character isn't a Mary Sue. The distinction is that a Mary Sue warps the way the world works around them. Glorifying the Sue is prioritized over maintaining the established characterizations or the straight-up rules of reality. A hero might be at the center of the story, but they won't be the only important character. Luke might be the one blowing up the Death Star and saving the day, but Hans is the one overcoming his personal demons and swooping in to save the kid's life at the last second, and Leia is the one sacrificing everything to get the plans to the rebellion in the first place. And we can't forget that the main drama in the story is caused by the presence of an equally fascinating villain to oppose our main trio. And that's the main false-positive here. There's a difference between being the hero of a story, and being the center of the universe. A Mary Sue's not a character, they're an artifact of an overly centralized story. And as a result, a Mary Sue will basically never have a good supporting cast. You can't have compelling characters and side stories in a world that's all about Mary Sue. And that's what Mary Sue is--not just the center of the universe, but the only real thing in the universe. Everything has to lead back to the Sue. In any situation where that's not true, you don't have a Mary Sue! You might have an overpowered character or a character you don't like, but the Sue-ness is built on the fact that the story is sacrificed to make the character look good. A character in a good, well-rounded story where there's focus put on other characters and character interactions that don't center on them can't be a Mary Sue. The worst they can be is poorly
written. And I would be remiss as an Internet content creator if I didn't address the gender thing. The fact of the matter is: the brand of
Mary Sue is a female trope. She started as a poorly-written self-insert mostly used by beginner female fanfic writers, and blossomed into a thousand recolored variants of a poorly written self insert used by a wider array of fanfic writers. But Mary Sue characters are not exclusively female, and not all female heroes are Mary Sues. The thing is, there's a toxicity in the ease with which female characters can be demonized as Mary Sues for expressing protagonist-y traits, like being unusually skilled or saving the day. It's the same thing that happened with Gen 1 Mary Sue. People looked at the character traits the Sues were given and decided that those traits were what made her a Mary Sue, rather than the poor writing that surrounded her. And because most fanfic authors were female, and most of their author avatars were female, this trope became a female character archetype. Traits that get a male character branded a "hero" are the very traits the designate a female character as a "Mary Sue". People are now hypersensitive to the
possibility of a character being a Sue, but only if that character fits what they think a Sue has to be - which is typically a female protagonist. Even though, as we've already established, being central to the plot isn't enough to make a character a Mary Sue, the resemblance is there, and people are quick to pile on with the accusations if they happen to dislike the character for whatever reason. But the definition being used is straight-up inaccurate. It has false positives and false negatives. Not every surprisingly badass female hero is a Mary Sue, and not every dude hero is free from the Sue-ness. And this wouldn't be a problem if people weren't disproportionately ashamed of writing or enjoying reading about a character who's been branded a Mary Sue. Rather than just following the character's adventures,
there's this lingering fear that the character might turn out to be a Mary Sue, making you either a hack writer or dumb for liking them. And because male characters are supremely unlikely to be called out for Sue/(Gary)Stu-ness, this shame mostly roots itself in female protagonists. And the thing that makes this disproportionately bad is that an accusation of Sue-ness is a conversation ender. The character has been tainted. Their strengths and confidence are suddenly negative traits that you're not allowed to admire. And because Mary Sue is very strongly a girl-associated trope that never really sticks when applied to a male character, the accusation of Sue-ness basically only ever makes it shameful to like female characters. And it is shame! How weird is that? We've made a literary device whose very name being mentioned is capable of instantly
stripping the joy out of a girl-centric story. I mean, nobody watching Dragon Ball is worried about being called out for liking Goku - except by Vegeta fans - even though he's a ludicrously powerful central character who everybody likes, who keeps pulling new abilities out of his ass and basically never loses, except for when he needs to get the "almost dying"-power up. I mean, hell, I like Goku, but the universe keeps finding new and exciting ways to make him even more awesome, even at the cost of logic or established reality. And that looks pretty Sue-y by the definition most people seem to use. And that doesn't mean you shouldn't like Goku! Personally I think the strength of the supporting cast is more than enough to save him
from Sue-ness, and even if it weren't, it's just plain fun. But it's important to
recognize that there's a disproportionate level of shame and anger directed towards female characters that have even a glimmer of Sue-ness about them, where a corresponding male character gets to pull off impossibly unlikely heroism with nary a sidelong glance. And that's purely because the trope is first recognized and codified in female characters. I mean, hell, if we go back a thousand years or so and take a gander at Beowulf, we see that Mary Sues have always existed. Beowulf's character is: "Look at Beowulf, he's so cool, isn't it amazing how he never loses and everybody loves him?" Beowulf's story is: "Look at Beowulf, he's so cool, isn't it great how the universe conspires to help him out right up until he has the most amazing death and burial in history?" And if you like or relate to a character that the world calls a Mary Sue, don't let that stop you from liking it! Nobody else gets to dictate your tastes! And there's no shame in just enjoying something. You don't need to justify liking or disliking a character. Everyone's got their tastes, don't force yourself to hate a character just because the world tells you you're not allowed to relate to them, or like one just because the world tells you you have to. Your tastes are your own, and you have the power to stop the conversation there. Someone else not relating to a hero you like, even someone making solid arguments for that character being a Mary Sue, doesn't mean you have to change your tastes to fit their narrative. You're allowed to have plain, stupid fun! That's not to say that Mary Sue isn't a real writing problem - but the traits we commonly ascribe to Mary Sue characters are not what make them Mary Sues. A Mary Sue is just symptomatic of a specific strain of poor writing, where the author prioritizes the glorification of a specific character over the story they're actually trying to tell. But because of the iconic trope codifying Mary Sue looks like a gorgeous, perfect female protagonist who does a lot of the important plot stuff, that's what people use to recognize the trope in action. And that's just inaccurate! And the corresponding levels of hate people get for writing and liking characters that fit that model discourages people from writing or reading stories with female heroes, because they run the risk of being branded with the dreaded Mary Sue label just because they look like they fit the stereotype. And don't get me wrong - don't write Mary Sues, they're boring! But maybe we should recognize that Mary Sue hasn't been a perky 15 year old girl hero with natural highlights and color changing eyes since 1973. And maybe it's time we updated the model a little for the modern day. So, yeah.
So Kirito from SAO or any harem anime protagonist where all the women are magnetized to love him unconditionally and are blind to any creepy tendencies he may have.