• Welcome to The Cave of Dragonflies forums, where the smallest bugs live alongside the strongest dragons.

    Guests are not able to post messages or even read certain areas of the forums. Now, that's boring, don't you think? Registration, on the other hand, is simple, completely free of charge, and does not require you to give out any personal information at all. As soon as you register, you can take part in some of the happy fun things at the forums such as posting messages, voting in polls, sending private messages to people and being told that this is where we drink tea and eat cod.

    Of course I'm not forcing you to do anything if you don't want to, but seriously, what have you got to lose? Five seconds of your life?

Mary-Sues

Coloursfall

Coloursfall

THIS IS HOW WE BLEED
I think most of us know what a Mary-Sue is, so let's talk about them here. :3

I'm sort of worried about one of my own OCs becoming Mary-Sue-y, so if you're curious about if yours are or not as well, post them here~

Now, on to talking.

I really hate it when people make very obvious Mary-Sues and don't own up to it. But I suppose that's typical. sigh.

On the other hand, it can be really fun to just... see how sparklypoo you can get a char, and then try to play them in something. That's how one of my best OCs started, and I've since tweaked her to be a normal human being.
 
The Mary-Sue Litmus Test! Very helpful!

The way I see it - it's fun to daydream about being an idealized version of yourself in your favorite anime/game/book/television show/what have you. I sure as hell do it (although while my fantasy-me's are pretty idealized, more confident, et cetera, I don't make them crazy-perfect because that's just boring. D:) If you want to write down your adventures in fantasyland, far be it for anyone to stop you. If it's something you have fun doing, more power to you.

...However, you should realize that if you post it on the internet, people will probably get pissed at you for wasting their time with a story about what you would do if you were five times more awesome than you actually are and in the Pokemon world. Granted, I don't care much for OC's to begin with, but if they act like reasonable characters and function well enough in the world they're put into then I'm cool.
 
D: I'm always so paranoid my characters are gonna turn out Mary-Sue/Gary-Stus. But yay, litmus test!
 
I don't know, I tend to dislike the litmus test because I feel it gives people sort of the wrong idea about Mary-Sues. Mary-Sueism is less a cluster of well-defined character traits than it is an attitude towards a character. The warning signs given by the litmus test are common symptoms of this attitude, but they're far from the only ones. In the end, the definition of a Mary-Sue I continue to favor is this one, which was given by the user ladybirdsleeps on LiveJournal:

ladybirdsleeps said:
The problem with defining what 'Mary Sue' means is that there are a lot of different ways for a character to be a Mary Sue. Mary-Sueism has more to do with an author's attitude towards her character than some checklist of Mary Sue traits. A Mary Sue is the author's pet, who's doted upon to the detriment of the story and the other characters.

Mary Sue cannot be upstaged.

I think that the best definition of Mary Sue - which doesn't work all the time, but works better than any of the others I've heard - is this: A Mary Sue is like a black hole that warps the fabric of the story, pulling everything into her orbit. Everyone either loves her or treats her cruelly, whether or not it's in character for them to even care. She gets away with things no one else would get away with. And so on.

Or another definition: If you put Mary Sue on one end of a see-saw, and the rest of the story on characters on the other, Mary Sue would be heavier. She's out of balance for her story - she's too much of something. She's too powerful, she's too tragic, she's too brave, she's too smart, she's too loved or too hated ...

Things that often get an original character labeled as a Mary Sue, like resemblance to an author, a floofy name, or special powers, aren't what makes a Mary Sue. It just happens that a lot of Mary Sue authors use 'special' traits to make their character seem cool, and resemblance to themselves as a way to get a little more vicarious wish-fulfillment.

If you put a piece of yourself into many characters does that make them all Mary-Sues?

I've never heard this definition, even as fuzzy as the definition of Mary Sue is. Most fiction writers put a little bit of themselves into their characters, but they definitely aren't all Mary Sues.

Is a Mary-Sue someone you base completely off yourself?

I don't think so. I would call that type of character a self-insert. Self-inserts are USUALLY Mary Sues in my experience, but I have seen them done occasionally without being Mary Sues. It's all a matter of balance.
Click to expand...
The litmus test is okay up to a point, but I find that it fosters some misconceptions. For example, people who have recently been enlightened as to the Mary-Sue phenomenon like to attack 'fics that have one or two qualities on the list and go "omg Mary-Sue!!" despite the fact that the test itself admits that in moderation they can be fine. At the same time, they can miss the brown-haired, brown-eyed kind and cheerful girl who can't lift cars or anything but nevertheless manages to be the star of everything.

So I define a Mary-Sue as someone who pulls the world into orbit around her, rather than being a true part of that world.
 
I despise the litmus test. Well, maybe not despise, but it has stuff like "does your character have a name that you picked because you thought it represented the character" and "is your character in good physical shape" (how would you make a fantasy or action story any other way) and "is your character part of a prophecy" (this is a plot flaw, not a character flaw) and "would you like to be friends with your character" (why would you ever write an unlikeable character) and "does your character use a sword in modern times for no logical reason?" (the logical reason is that it's awesome) and "is your character unusually accomplished" (why would you write about someone who isn't, unless it's a slice of life thing) and so on and so forth.

Fiction is boring if it's about Average Joe Lunchbucket. The authors of the litmus test need to realize that.

Personally, I think people should stop worrying about having their characters be Mary Sues, Harry Potter scores very high on the litmus test iirc, so it's kind of obvious that the test is mostly inaccurate and it doesn't really matter as much as people think it does.


also, Ketsu, if you read the very first page of TV Tropes it says that tropes are not cliches, you do not have to avoid them. besides, there is a counter trope for almost everything in there so it's really impossible to avoid having your characters fall into some trope categories.
 
Fiction is boring if it's about Average Joe Lunchbucket. The authors of the litmus test need to realize that.
Click to expand...
Well... no, I can't say I agree with that. Probably the vast majority of fiction is written about people who are, for their world, quite average. I mean, you like your friends, don't you? You enjoy them telling their weird stories about how their friend almost got eaten by her own python or they totally made up all the numbers on that lab yesterday but got an A anyway, correct? These are obviously different than stories set down in print, but they're still stories. Humans are fascinated by other humans. You don't need to morph your protagonist into a half-elf wunderkind, or make them the Chosen of Might, or anything like that to have people care about them and enjoy the story. You just need to make them human.

And the thing is, a lot of the Sue traits get in the way of that humanity. They turn people more into alien sparklyspecial people than humans. It's a credit to J.K. Rowling that she managed to heap all that craziness onto Harry and still have him remain a recognizable human being.
 
I'm generally pretty confident about my characters' non-Sueness, really, because I love them mostly for their imperfections, and writing a true Sue that way would be pretty difficult. I firmly believe that the core of Sueness lies in the author's state of mind more than in the character's actual traits. Most of my characters could be written as Stus or Sues if I were in a different state of mind (I did that to Alan in "Molzapart and Rainteicune", pretty much, not that he got much characterization there to begin with), but because right now I revel in their failures and shortcomings and all the crap that can get them and others into within their world, they're just, well, not. :/ And before anybody gets all skeptical, yes, they tend to pass Mary-Sue litmus tests with flying colors, not that litmus tests should generally be taken very seriously (for pretty much the reasons that Negrek stated, which I won't bother to repeat).
 
Last edited:
I think the litmus test is interesting, if nothing else... but it could be misleading. Not everything on there means your character is a Mary Sue. If your character fits a lot of the stuff on there, then maybe you have a problem, but I wouldn't judge your character by that alone.

I like the definition that Negrek posted, that a Mary Sue pulls the world around her.
 
(this post is in response to Negrek's)

hmm, you do have a point. still, although you do want to give your character a human personality, you also want to make him unique enough to justify there being a story about him. you want to write a story about the guy who saves the world, not bystander #217 who cheers him on as he fights Garthanox, Slayer of Worlds in the epic battle. you want to write about the guy who wins the Pokemon league, not the guy who loses in his first battle. many of the symptoms in the test can be justified by a suitably epic plot where this kind of stuff needs to happen.

but maybe I'm thinking too big. of course, good slice of life style stories can happen. but you STILL want to make an interesting character. you want there to be a reason you're writing about Sally and not her next door neighbor. if you see what I'm saying.
 
hmm, you do have a point. still, although you do want to give your character a human personality, you also want to make him unique enough to justify there being a story about him.
Click to expand...
Unique enough... or mundane enough. Sometimes it's the very fact that someone seems so average that people really feel for them.

you want to write a story about the guy who saves the world, not bystander #217 who cheers him on as he fights Garthanox, Slayer of Worlds in the epic battle. you want to write about the guy who wins the Pokemon league, not the guy who loses in his first battle.
Click to expand...
Really? Because I think it would be rather interesting to explore some of those situations. What's going through the mind of that spectator at the League match? What if someone did lose in the first round battle of the League Championship? Where might they go from there? How could they redeem themselves from that? I actually think that those sound like excellent story ideas. In the first case probably not for any drawn-out sort of 'fic, but for a one-shot, I could see it working.

Also, remember that just because a person's ordinary doesn't mean they can't do extraordinary things. Sort of a root for the underdog thing--would you be more excited when Joe Average somehow managed to pull out a win against astounding odds, or when Special Sparklypants did the same thing (and probably without breaking a sweat, too)?

Perhaps I misunderstood you a bit; it sounds this post like you're talking about normal as in "a person nothing interesting ever happens to" rather than normal as in "doesn't have any unusual magical powers and isn't related to a god or anything like that."

many of the symptoms in the test can be justified by a suitably epic plot where this kind of stuff needs to happen.
Click to expand...
Yes, you can have characters with these traits without having a Sue or Stu. I'm not sure that an epic plot is always the best way to justify them, but that is indeed one of the reasons I don't like the litmus tests so much--they seem to be like, "OMG, these traits are always bad. Stay away!"

My, I'm just pontificating all over the place tonight.
 
eh, I guess you're right.

also, I kind of dislike it when a mary-sue symptom is "she's so thin, she could be anorexic (but she's not)". I mean, yes, it's stupid, but it's not entirely unreasonable. I'm thin enough to be anorexic, but my diet consists almost entirely of junk food and I probably get a little under the average amount of excersize. so, uh... I don't know.
 
As someone who seldom explores the technical side of writing, I've always been confused about the term "Mary Sue"; I've heard it defined as many things, including (but certainly not limited to) a character who is completely perfect, a character who is completely imperfect, and the self-insert description discussed above. Even after reading the entry Negrek quoted (which did clarify some things), I still find the term far too abstract for something that's used so often when criticizing writing.
 
I, personally, define a Mary-Sue as:

1. a self-insert, usually obvious.
2. a perfect character. Like, overly perfect.
3. a very, very, horribly OOC canon character.
 
I kind of define it as a character that is used to live out the author's fantasies.
 
But as it's been said before, FMC, a self-insert is not automatically a Sue. Any sensible person realizes that he or she has flaws and quirks, and if they are sensible and a decent author then they can insert themselves into the story and still keep those flaws and quirks intact. Granted, since the author isn't really a Pokémon trainer they're going to be adding bits to themselves here and there, and it can be a relatively vain thing to do, but just because my protagonist happens to share my name, appearance and personality doesn't mean you can automatically write my story off as Sueish and terrible. Kinda conceited, yeah, but that doesn't make it terrible.

I generally don't think about Mary-Sues too much, either in my own (nonexistant) writing or in other things I read, unless it is blatantly obvious. (Then again, I barely read fanfics these days anyway...) I guess I have enough confidence in my own characterization, at least, that I don't feel like I need to worry about running things through those silly litmus tests. Whether or not that's a good thing, eh...
 
erk. Shoulda elaborated on that a bit then... was in a hurry (homework. =_=; )

By self-insert I mean more like the people who just... stick themselves in a canon. I'll use a very, sadly, oft seen example that I've ran into in the FMA fandom.

FMA takes place in the 1920's or so, in a Europe-y setting. People really like to just... have themselves, iPod and all, stuffed into said world. Just... no. please. You make baby Edward cry. You could at least try to make an OC. Please?
 
Self-inserts are all well and good as long as the world doesn't revolve around them. Also, it really helps if it's actually a self-insert rather than a heavily-idealized thing loosely based off of the author.

Character traits that people are able to root for and the impression that not everything revolves around the main character matter a hell of a lot more than whether or not a character is the magical offspring of a dragon, angel, demon, and fox spirit who is capable of doing absolutely anything and is charismatic as all hell. Mind you, I haven't seen that type of character done well and most people will be put off by it, but it's not going to make for something godawful just by itself.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom