Mary Sue Or Not A Mary Sue?

[NightScribe]

I've got a serious question regarding OFCs and am interested in hearing opinions.

In my fan fics, I always come up with OCs, as I feel it allows me to be more creative. One fic I wrote, a reviewer had said, quite kindly, that they weren't partial to Mary Sues but was liking my story. Hmmm, interesting. I replied that my story wasn't a Mary Sue, but that was the great thing about fiction, everybody got something different out of it. I also said I feel that every author puts a little of themselves into characters (a personality trait, physical characteristic, etc.)

So my question is, do you think all OFCs, or OMCs for that matter, are Mary Sues/Gary Stus? I mean, Stephen King is the King (no pun intended) of putting himself in his stories (a writer, a school teacher). I personally felt that the Thorn Birds was one huge Mary Sue, before I even knew what the term meant (maybe before it even existed). Some of Margaret Mitchell's character traits showed up in Scarlett O'Hara, put I didn't feel that novel was a Mary Sue at all. Follow where I'm going with this?

What do you think? Do you hate Mary Sues, avoid them like the plague, get ticked if you feel you've been duped into reading one? Or does it not matter, or can you overlook it if the story is fairly well written?

[Guest Alien Pirate Pixagi]

I hate mary sues, but I don't think all OC's fall under that category. Hell, even if the character is YOU that doesn't neccessarily make him/her a MS/GS. I believe a Mary Sue is a character that is perfect without reason, drop dead gorgeous and who everyone loves.

I hate when people assume that an Original Character in a fic is a Mary Sue. Give it a chance! PLEASE!

And believe me, there is no such thing a well written Mary Sue. Well written, to me, is when all aspects of the story hit a standard. Characters, situation and reactions all need to be believable, even in a fantasy.

[Guest yamsham]

I don't think all OC's fall under that category. Hell, even if the character is YOU that doesn't neccessarily make him/her a MS/GS. I believe a Mary Sue is a character that is perfect without reason, drop dead gorgeous and who everyone loves.

I think a lot of people don't know the definition of a Mary Sue, or perhaps they've heard so many people harping on them, they've come to assume any OC is one. To me, a Mary Sue is to characterization what typos are to spelling or noun/verb agreement is to grammar. It's just another example of bad writing.

Personally, I haven't encountered too many. If a fic is bad enough to have a Mary Sue, it usually shows in the first sentence or paragraph with spelling or grammar errors. And by then I've gone on to the next thing. I don't stick around to see if there's a Mary Sue in it.

[StoryJunkie]

I sense that I've only read two since coming here. Tell me if I'm wrong. In both of them, the women were almost larger than life. Meaning unbelievably confident, fantastic figures, and had guys fighting over them all the time. Inspite of that, the women seemed kind of superficial, almost as if they were cardboard cutout characters. If you dug too deeply, there was nothing there but impulses, and their preoccupations were only about what they were wearing or how they looked affected others.

[Guest Ertia]

Mary sue...oooohoooh ohhhh MARY SUE..

Okay, musical moment over.

Here's my take on it.

Are you writing original fiction? Then that's not a Mary Sue! It's a HERO!

Are you writing fanfiction? Where canon characters are the heros? Then be very wary.

I brought some original characters into my story "Fifteen Years" because I wasn't comfortable having a canon character in the role of permanent courtesan, but I've tried to make them less than perfect, less than ideal.

The Perfect Mary Sue is a problem. She knows everything, solves everything, fixes everything.

But I have a worse problem with the Pathetic Mary Sue. She makes a bedraggled, wounded entrance, obtains the sympathy of the canon characters, and then procedes to make them act all out of proportion with their characterizations!

Lord Elrond is NOT going to marry the poor raped beaten human girl who shows up during the snowstorm.

Harry Potter isn't going to suddenly throw over Ginny for the poor girl who just escaped from Voldemort.

Creating an original character is wonderful, and my favorite LOTR fanfiction could be a mary sue; the most beautiful mary sue ever written, imo. (Tale of Marian, by Rana1 at www.fanfiction.net). But creating an original character means just that- creating a character, not a one-dimensional Slice of Perfection just begging to join the Enterprise and show Captain Kirk how to really fly a spaceship.

Just my two cents worth!

[Guest Alien Pirate Pixagi]

But creating an original character means just that- creating a character, not a one-dimensional Slice of Perfection just begging to join the Enterprise and show Captain Kirk how to really fly a spaceship.

Best line ever.

Okay, I'm don e channeling Comic Book Guy.

[Guest Agaib]

You'll have to excuse Me for borrowing your comment for My sig Ertia. ^^

[Guest Melody Fate]

Mary Sue, alas poor girl we knew you well...

No one can really pin down Mary Sue. We try...we have sites and tests to see if someone is a Mary Sue. We try to snap it down. "If the character shares three or more characteristics with the author, she's a Mary Sue. Or, "If the character has any unusual features."

In truth, all efforts to come up with a set formula are useless because there is no real formula. It all depends on the skill of the writer.

A good writer can create a character that shares several characteristics with the author, that is breathtakingly beautiful, so on and so forth, and she won't be a Mary Sue. A poor writer can go out of their way to create the anti-Mary Sue and still come up with a character we all scream is a Mary Sue.

We think we can pin it down because we've all noticed a certain pattern.... bad writers create horrible self insertion characters. But that isn't the character, that's the skill of the writer. Yes, little teeniboppers who live on the glow of their seventh grade English teacher complimenting their writing often create this annoying character who is too perfect, too good looking, too whatever. But we all know that even if the character was ugly and stupid, we'd still yell "MARY SUE!" because the writing sucks. It's not the character, it's the person who's trying to bring this character to life.

One of the big, "OMG, MARY SUE!" battle cries often is over the fact that the hero of the story becomes instantly smitten with the OC. ("Hark," Captian Sparrow called out, as Amber-Jemmini Heavensent, better known as 'Cat' strolled past him. "I have never seen such a lovely sight! I hereby dedicate my life to groveling at your feet, in hopes that you'll give me a mere crumb of your affection! Shall we go boff ourselves silly?") That really isn't the OC's fault... it's the writer's fault, because she just made the canon character grossly OOC.

We think we have Mary Sue pinned because we notice that many OC's who are Mary Sues have similar characteristics. In truth, you can't judge by characteristics. The color of someone's eyes, or how goodlooking they are, or even how skilled they are in battle, cooking, or lovemaking has nothing to do with if she's a Mary Sue. It's the skill of a writer who makes a character a Mary Sue or not.

Another argument I've heard? "If she survives the crash, lives through the night in the haunted house, escapes with the hero at the last moment," she's a Mary Sue. If that's the case then we might as well give up writing completely, because who wants to read about boring people who are right along with the crowd? An OC has to be somewhat interesting and has to have something about them that enables them to survive.

I think we spend too much time looking for Mary Sue in every OC we come across. My opinion is, if you enjoy the story, even if the OC has purple eyes, is a ninja and bakes one mean apple pie, she's not a Mary Sue. If the story makes you gag up your lunch because the writing is pisspoor and the canon characters are acting totally OOC, then it's just a bad story. If you want to say the OC was a Mary Sue, that's fine, but recognize it's the poor writing skills that really make you hate it.

If I weren't so stuck on my one story (growls softly and angrily at herself) I'd be half tempted to try to write a story with an OC who embraced every supposed Mary Sue garentee and see if I could write the story well enough that most folks would never think she was a Mary Sue. Then again, maybe I'm already doing that with the story I'm working on.

[WotanAnubis]

Well, in response to Melody Fate's lengthy post, I have but one thing to say:

If the character warps all the main characters around her, she's a Mary Sue. The more the canon gets raped in her presence, the more she's a Sue.

If that does not happen, she's a possibly well-written original character.

Of course, this definition does not apply to original fiction, but it's easier to get away with strangely perfect characters in original fiction. Mostly because then they're not called "Mary Sue", but "protagonists".

[Guest Melody Fate]

If the character warps all the main characters around her, she's a Mary Sue. The more the canon gets raped in her presence, the more she's a Sue.

If that does not happen, she's a possibly well-written original character.

Again, all of that can be laid at the feet of pisspoor writing, not that the character has purple eyes, or is the unknown daughter of Captain Kirk.

X-men fanfiction was one of the first types to really take off on the internet and some of the best of the early stories had characters that people would now scream "MARY SUE!" because they follow all the so-called "Mary Sue" rules. (Like Kid Dinamo for one... also the Dawn series, X-S, etc.) However, they were generally well written and most people enjoyed them. Yes, we knew what Mary Sue's were then... the term had been around since the days of the printed fanzines, but most people didn't think those writers were writing Mary Sue's becuse the writing was just so...good.

A great writer can get away with just about anything. A poor writer can try for a million years and all of her OC's will suck, basically because she herself sucks.

Fortunately, time usually takes care of bad writers. They either become good writers or they give it up.

[Guest lightgoddess]

WTF?!?!? The board ate my fucking post! It was good too! Ah well, I suppose that post went to the same place our missing socks go...

[NightScribe]

lightgoddess,

Didn't Ren & Stimpy find the mountain of lost socks on some planet? Are the culprits responsible in some way related to the South Park Underpants Gnomes????

[Guest Alien Pirate Pixagi]

WTF?!?!? The board ate my fucking post! It was good too! Ah well, I suppose that post went to the same place our missing socks go...

You mean my dog ate your post? O_o

[Guest lightgoddess]

I remember that!!! Of course, this is the same Ren & Stimpy who pushed the red button.

[Guest lightgoddess]

You mean my dog ate your post? O_o

No, no, I'm pretty certain it was the forum. The message didn't say:

ERROR: PIXIAGI'S DOG HAS EATEN YOUR POST!

It said something about something being missing and having to do it over again. I almost cried.

[Guest Alien Pirate Pixagi]

No, no, I'm pretty certain it was the forum.  The message didn't say:

ERROR: PIXIAGI'S DOG HAS EATEN YOUR POST!

It said something about something being missing and having to do it over again.  I almost cried.

:: hugs :: Aw! here's a cookie :: hands cookie ::

Though... that WOULD be a funny error message...

ERROR: Forum Puppy Ate Your Post!

[Guest yamsham]

Though... that WOULD be a funny error message...

ERROR: Forum Puppy Ate Your Post!

ROFLMAO!!

I second that! That would be hysterical! Maybe with an animated GIF of a puppy munching on a piece of paper.

[NefertariAran]

Personally, I hate Mary Sues. I define them as overly perfect, overly powerful characters who have no drawbacks or consequences to said power or perfection. They are, what those of us in the trading card game world would call, 'broken'. They can beat any canon character at anything, and every canon character just adores her for it.

However, I don't think it's fair when an OC is automatically labeled a Mary Sue. Granted, for every decent, well developed OC there's usually about a dozen more Mary Sues just waiting to rape whatever canon they set their sights on.

One of the arguments I've heard is that if the OC is involved in a romantic relationship with a canon character then they're a Mary Sue. Personally, if you can find a way to reasonably place and OC with a canon character, without making the canon character OOC, then go for it. Some canon pairings are just cringe worthy, so if an author wants to mess with that in a believable fashion, I don't see the problem with that.

Ok, my rambling is done.

[StoryJunkie]

A great writer can get away with just about anything. A poor writer can try for a million years and all of her OC's will suck, basically because she herself sucks.

Don't mean to be nit-picky (but its just that time of the month, mel), both "mary-sues" I read were actually written by men. (or boys, more accurately), which I think contributed to my idea that m/s's are shallow and powerful because they are percieved by the author to be so. The men characterizations in one fic were actually more fleshed out, and in the other, the men were just as m/s as the woman.

I think I must have been guilty of writing m/s's when I was younger and didn't have as much life experience, although my brothers all were quick to be mean enough to turn me off guys for a long time. (When I met my SO, I was like, "so what? you're just a boy!" He had to do quite a bit of convincing.) ER, kind of rambled there. sry.

[Guest Melody Fate]

Don't mean to be nit-picky (but its just that time of the month, mel), both "mary-sues" I read were actually written by men. (or boys, more accurately), which I think contributed to my idea that m/s's are shallow and powerful because they are percieved by the author to be so. The men characterizations in one fic were actually more fleshed out, and in the other, the men were just as m/s as the woman.

You can still find hundreds of them written by women as well. I still stick to the point that a good writer can write just about anything, a bad writer can't.

Unless you were refering to my using the term "she." In that case, I do that a lot when refering to fanfiction writers, because they're usually female. I get tired of writing he/she him/her all the time. And yes, some people use

"their" but an English teacher drilled into my head never to use that, that it wasn't a "someone who's sexuality is unknown at this point."

Guys are just as capable of writing terrible characters as girls. No one is immune. Generally though, fanfiction writers are more likely to be female than male. Thus when I'm refering to "person unknown" for a fanfiction writer, I'll likely use "she."

We really do need to come up with a word that covers a male or a female. I get tired of pregnant friends calling their unborn babies "he" (until they know the sex) and some overbearing moron going, "That isn't right. What if the baby is a female?" "It" is cold and constantly going, "He or she" is annoying.

[Guest lightgoddess]

Ok, I'm going to try replying to this once more. Hopefully, the forum won't decide it's dinner time.

Like most everyone else, I feel like not all OC's are Mary Sue's. I think that there are writers who can pull it off and writers who can't, then there are writers like me who venture into the world of OC's mainly for supporting characters and occasionally (ok, once) venture into the world of creating an OC for a main character simply because the tale begs to be written.

I think the most surefire way to know that a character is probably not a MS is if that character could be your sister or best friend, if you as a reader can identify with that character.

A true MS is a character that is a little too pretty or smart or nice. She's got legs like Barbie and at least as many degrees and as much stuff. Or, on the flip side, she's so pitiful the reader wants to shoot her and put her out of her (and their!) misery.

A MS is not a character with an odd name or unusual characteristic or background. Personally, I like characters with unusual characteristics like having one green eye and one blue eye. I like characters with huge flaws like fearlessness or a quick temper. I like intelligent, well-rounded characters. I also like slightly neurotic characters. It gives the author room for the story to unfold and develop and for the character to make mistakes and learn.

I think the biggest indicator of a MS, though, is if the author can not make her connect to the readers. I was terrified that when I posted my story with my OC, that she would be labeled a MS. Of the near 100 reviews I got, I had one proclaim her to be our lovely friend. lol Most readers connected with her and for some reason that surprised me.

[StoryJunkie]

well then. In my opinion, having surprisingly never encountered a Marysue before or ever hearing of such a thing until I burst upon the virtual writing scene but a mere year ago, I understood exactly what was meant when MS was mentioned, then became befuddled by the many variations thereof. I still like my own definition best. A superficial character, self-absorbed, and obsessed with their own impact on others rather than caught up in all the anxieties and worries that are the reality of life.

It's the world of the 20 year old woman through the eyes of someone much younger. I remember sitting on the floor in my Grandmother's house while my aunt and uncles sat around the table drinking and laughing and playing cards, and I remember, in my 2 year old mind, thinking: "WOW, they Know So MUCH!" My little being was filled with admiration for their astounding abilities. I thought: "When I Get To That Age, I, Too, Will Know Everything!"

Well, those dreams came to a shattering halt, didn't they?

[Guest Tuxedo Elf]

I don't think all OFCs are Sues, but I do think it's very hard to write a good one. It's something I'm currently working on and it's one of the toughest things I've ever tried to write.

To create a character that fits into your chosen world and make her interesting without making her annoying is definitely a challenge. I have read good ones though, and when done properly they're a delight to read about.

If that even makes sense. lol.

[Guest Acita]

I admit that I typically avoid original characters when given warning of them playing a major role in a piece of fan fiction. Background characters created by the author to further the plot of a story is fine, sure, but I read for the characters I love. If I wanted to read about original characters then I could go over to the original fiction section and try to find something fresh, but just mind that they stay in the background of the story.

This is not to say that all original characters are bad, but simply that I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to fan fiction.

[Guest Pink Lace]

I generally don't like OCs as main characters in fanfiction. In fact, I don't believe I have ever read any OC char that I like. As I have been reading fanfiction for ...over 5 years and gone through more than 1000 of them I now completely avoid OCs.

Stephen King cannot write a Mary Sue, that is ridiculous. MS is a fanfiction term. Writers are expected to write themselves into their original fiction to some extent as it is almost impossible to write a character that is completely different from yourself. Also, unless the main character is some kind of anti-hero, they are mostly sympathetic types. Fanfiction has Mary Sues, original fiction has Heroes.

I even read some dumb stuff about Luke Skywalker being a Mary Sue of George Lucas in Wiki, just because Lucas supposedly made Luke to have the qualities people like/love. Pfft. Don't know he is the archetypal hero? Most heroes have these similarities (read some Joseph Campbell). It's normal for heroes/main characters in original fiction to be powerful, charismatic, kind, etc.

The problem for me is that in fanfiction, OCs tend to annoy me by borrowing the roles of established characters fans already know and love. For example, in Harry Potter Hermione is the brainy witch and I resent some new OC barging in and being smarter than her. Even worse some are smarter than Hermione, better than Harry at Quiddich, more fun than Ron, blonder than Malfoy, etc.