The “Mary Sue” Guide

This guide is meant to introduce and/or inform you of this threat that is currently attacking storywritting, drawing, Original Character creation (OCs) and fandom/fanfiction in general, not to say Originality itself!

During the course of this guide, you will learn what a Mary Sue is, you’ll identify one when sighted and, most importantly, you will not create one and hopefully you will help others in the subject, so they don’t create Mary Sues too.

I) Mary Sue 101:

-What is a “Mary Sue”?

“Mary Sue” is a title given to characters in fanfiction (and sometimes original, professional work) who are simply perfect: They are beautiful, smart, friendly, always willing to help for nothing in exchange even if they can die, powerful, important in one way or other...you get the point (I will explain on emphasis later). These characters are often created in Roleplaying forums/chatrooms or simply as OCs with a storyline. They usually are related to every canon character of the fanfic they are inserted into, and have major relevancy with every success that happens.

-Why not make a “Mary Sue”?

Although this is totally based on personal opinion, It is not recommendable to create one simply because “Mary Sues” are empty, boring characters with little to no space for development. Think of it: They are just perfect, and people just don’t enjoy reading that, in fact, it gets very boring reading about a perfect character everybody likes with no flaws or enemies whatsoever, I’ll make an example later.

-But why is it wrong if I want to create a good looking (natured) character?

Nothing, in fact, it is excellent that you want to create a nice character and storywrite/comic about it, however, making your character a Mary Sue is totally different: Making your character perfect in every sense of the word is simply stupid: There is no place for development, no place for events, no place for something interesting to happen, and no place for interesting relationships (as every character likes him/her and all the opposing sex cast has a crush on her/him), no place for anything that has not been written so far.

-Does it only apply to female characters?

No, “Mary Sue” is simply a title given to both male and female characters, but it should be noted that most Mary Sues are Females. People often make variations such as “Gary Stu”, but for the sake of understanding this guide, we will refer to both female and male as “Mary Sue”, AND also remember that all the examples will be refering to the Mary Sue to as female unless noted otherwise.

Does the author of the Mary Sue recieve a special title as well?

Yes, they are often called “Suethors” or “9-year olds with no originality”

Now that you got a basic concept of what Mary Sue is, we will advance to the next area:

II) Factors/Features:

Now I will explain a little in depth the factors and features that make a character a Mary Sue, as they are often seen in fanfiction: (For examples, We’ll refer to the Mary Sue as “Diana”)

Beautiful:

The character in question is much more beautiful than any existing canon character. Not only that, but every male in the series in question is also in love with this character, no exceptions. (I personally hate when Suethors do this)

I.E: Diana is put in the Dragon Ball Trilogy universe. Goku, Vegeta, Trunks, Goten, Cell, Piccolo, Krillin, Broly, Frieza, Buu and Shenron are all in love with Diana and her goddess-quality beauty.

Saint:

Mary Sues are often the best person in the universe they are inserted into: they always forgive (given the case that someone actually did something to her), help even if it means a great risk, always give, never ask anything in return, is very understanding and thoughtful, you get the picture.

I.E: A kid in the village is ill, he is suffering from a lethal disease that can only be cured by the mythical herb that resides atop the mountain, guarded by a dragon, it’s familly, a guild of bandits and the U.S. Army. Going there is certain death, but Diana will go nonetheless and, naturally, she befriended all the guardians of the herb, and saved the kid. (and think of it, she probably could have cured the boy with her sweat, after all, that’s what a Mary Sue does)

Problem-solver:

Mary Sues arrive and solve any problem that might be taking place, even if it’s something really private and delicate. This is better explained in the example:

I.E: Two clans have fought with each other for 3500 years in bloody wars. Diana HAPPENS to arrive to that precise place and, after getting to know the royalty of both clans, befriending and getting their eternal trust in less than 15 mins, she starts an exaggerated, clichéd emotional speech that touches everyone’s hearts and solves the 3500-year problem in less than 1 day, then Diana leaves, waving her hand good-bye to the now pacific clans. Also, the whole royal familly fell in love with Diana.

Smart/Talent:

Mary Sues often have an IQ of 350, whooping everyone on everything. On High-school stories and fanfics, the Mary Sue will get the best grades on everything, will be better than everyone and won’t break a sweat while doing so

I.E: Diana is in High-School, her schedule for tomorrow is:
7 Exams, a Triathlon, rehersals on the play and is the drummer/guitarrist/Bassist on a concert. How did Diana do? 7 A+++, She ended on first place 6 minutes ahead of the 2nd place, knows the entire script backwards and gave an encore to the audience.

Potential:

Pretty self-explanatory, Mary Sues always learn a new thing with relative ease, and then master it completely in an hour, owning people that have dedicated their entire lives to the activity.

I.E: Diana has to go against Richard, 4-times national champion on ping-pong, while Diana has never played before. Diana has 7 days to train for the event with a master betrayed and defeated by Richard, in which everyone is impressed of her god-like potential to play the game and accept that she is better than them, when the day arrives, she wins 72 – 0 with relative ease.

Loved by everyone:

In any series the Mary Sue is put, every female character wants to be her friend and every male character is in love with her, this is usually linked with “Beautiful”, “Saint” and “Problem-Solver” as a combination of the three, but is still very lame, as even villians love the Mary Sue sometimes.

I.E: Does it really need one? Okay: She is put in Kingdom Hearts universe, Sora, Donald and Goofy simply fall in love with her, she befriends the Heartless and the Nobodies, Organization XIII have an internal struggle because they all fell in love with Diana, every planet she visits eagerlly awaits for her return...I think I explained myself (Mary Sues break the series apart...)

Unnatural Powers:

This one actually depends on the series in question; Sure, is perfectly fine if your character has superpowers in fanfics like DBZ, but...BLEH I’ll just give you the example.

I.E. Diana is put in Lucky Star universe, and past the part where she becomes everyone’s best friend, she goes off flying, transforms going through a rather unconforting scene, battles the cities’ bullies all by herself, and defeats them with freakin’ magic spells and finally summons fantastic animals and gifts them to each of the girls. (Can you break this awesome serie anymore? A Mary Sue can!)

Connection to a canon character:

This is one of the most common atributes of a Mary Sue: when the author is too lazy to explain where it’s character came from, they just come up with “She’s [Insert canon character] [insert relationship]”

Multi-I.E:
Uzumaki Diana is Naruto’s long lost sister, separated at birth.
Diana is Goku’s twin sister that got accidentally sent to [Generic planet] at birth.
Diana is Sonic the Hedg.... You get the point.

Insanelly Powerful:

Heh...I.E: Diana, fighting at her 50%, is an equal match for SSJ4 Gogeta...Do I need to say more?

Although there are even more factors, I will consider this ones as the most important components of a Mary Sue (Note that they all work toghether at the same time...making it more irritating)

III) Emphasis on the why/why not on “Factors/Features”:

This can be considered by as an “Attack” on the Mary Sue components listed above, I’m better just getting directly to the point, so here I go:

Beautiful:

It’s totally acceptable that you want to make your character beautiful, no one has a problem with that, sure, but there is people that just go too far by making stuff like “Diana is way sexier than any of the pre-existing characters in the whole series”... You can moderate yourself and make her as beautiful, or a bit more beautiful than the most beautiful character, but never go as far as saying that no other character can compare to half you character’s beauty.

Saint:

No one is so damn sainty as to do anything they get asked for, getting nothing in return and never seeming to have a flaw...FLAWS ARE NECESSARY IN CHARACTERS...THEY MAKE THEM INTERESTING!!! People don’t seem to understand that flaws are natural, and that naturallity is necessary for an interesting characters to be developed! Why would you want to read about a character that simply has no development at all? To see it solve everything with ease and no interesting stuff happening? Meh!.

Problem-Solver:

It’s perfectly fine if your character is understanding and thoughtful, but never exaggerate to freakin’ proportions such as the set example...this is usually seen in fanfic AS WELL as original works, which is pretty pathetic. And if you are going to do it, at least explain every detail and come up with something good, instead of saying that “Diana can see things from a “Big Picture” Point of view, so is easy for her to solve things”, don’t give up that stupid excuse for a character and a plot, and use your head to think something original.

Smart/Talent:

Nobody can be beter than everyone at everything, nobody can be good at everything at such a high degree. It’s natural that your character falls in some areas, maybe he is good at maths, but sucks at chemistry, or she is good at History but sucks at P.E.... COME UP WITH SOMETHING!!! It isn’t that hard.

Potential:

Please, this one is obvious, no one can master so many things in such a short period of time...It even sounds like a frustrated attempt at making something from the author. Learning something in a short period of time is already something, and is quite acceptable, but freakin’ mastering it? As in, being able to compete with professionals? Your originality sucks if you can’t come up with something better than this... at least say that your character has a huge stockpile of steroids or something.

Loved by Everyone:

Stupid, simply stupid... “everyone” means EVERYONE! Enemies, those generic emotionless characters...NO! SIMPLY NO! It’s humanly impossible!

Unnatural Powers:

Again, this depends on the series in question.
This one has many faces, one being Roleplaying: Lets say you are RPing in a nice forum, the RP consists on normal people on their lives, something really simple like that. Ok so you are enjoying yourself and suddenlly you see this new user that posted in your page, answering with crap such as “Elizabeth arrives from the skies, gently descending with her angellic wings and her dragon pet. Once she is on the floor, she waves her wings and shakes her tail, waving and saying “Hello!” while some flowers appear at her feet” and other nonsense that really screws the flow of the RP...I get an urge to slap these out-of-bounds people.

Connection to Canon Character:

This one relies entirelly on the author’s level to explain or create a scenario: I’ve seen incredibly nice fanfics describing every detail on how they are involved with a character in the series, but sadly, this is a minority, as most of the people that go with this format just say “[Sue] is [main character]’s long lost sibling” not even explaining what the hell happened...EVEN A 9 YEAR OLD CAN DO THAT!!! Before making a character, make sure you know what you are doing.

Insanelly Powerful:

Stupid, Unoriginal, Boring, Cheap, Fail. I don’t need to explain this, the title says it all, Insanelly powerful = insanelly unoriginal; You can’t develop your character in any way as she is beautiful, smart, talented, the best person in the world, so the best thing you think is making her unmesureably powerful? Something is wrong with you, my friend.

SUMMARY

For those who still don’t get it, Mary Sues are Beautiful, Smart, Understanding, Athletic, Talented and Powerful...or like some others like to sum it all toghether: Perfect.

Making a Perfect character is really stupid, you have nothing to develop, nothing to worry about, nothing to entertain the masses with, nothing to refine and polish until you get a nice outcome and enjoy it as you inspire people to create their own great characters, you have Nothing but a character that can do anything better than anyone... in other words, your character SUCKS.

Mary Sues are an offense to us creators and authors that actually put effort in creating a character that can get attention out of artistic skill.

That’s why Mary Sues are often shot in sight when caught by an author.

And if you still need a final example, covering everything like the difference between a nice OC and an ugly, enemy Mary Sue, I accept the challenge:

IV) Final Comparation/Example

Now, to finalize this, I’ll compare my OC to a Mary Sue in a very brief, basic, and simple way

Name: Nishiki Yurishizu (Not real name)

Nickname: The Red Rattlesnake

Age: 27

Hair: Red

Eyes: Purple

Species: Human (connection to Reptile Cycle)

Personallity: Yurishizu is an unpredictable individual belonging to the Reptile Cycle, Yurishizu is very cunning, sarcastic and mean, having few friends. He supports teamwork in activities if needed, but nonetheless, he will happily backstab someone (like he has done in the past) if he can reach a higher goal with less dificulty by doing so. Yurishizu loves listening to music a lot, but he dislikes and even hates most styles of art in general, such as drawings and stories. Yurishizu’s code of honor is rather unique: He will never betray his few friends or people he shares mutual respect with, but will readily backstab others that don’t fall into the mentioned status if he sees a gain in doing so. Yurishizu is also very protective of his ideology, and attacks other ideologies that confront his own. His fighting style include using weapons such as pipes and utilizing dirty moves. Regardless of this, if the opposition asks Yurishizu to fight fairly, Yurishizu will often do, complete with bowing, respect for opponent and sportsmanship, but even if he displays this kind of respect, this doesn’t mean he won’t use brutal or lethal moves.
He is a total fan of spicy food and sour food, and loves being lazy on Sundays (considering he can at the given time) and enjoys activities such as basketball, spending time with his pet Iguana or with some members of his family and doing rather mad things for his own pleasure. Yurishizu acts like a madman or a lunatic person sometimes when a “Mindsnap” occurs, showing a more brutal but less selfworrying version of himself, and often attacking nearby people he deems hostile (pretty much everyone) and generally shouting off his true intentions or plans. Has a rivalry with Majima Zabieru.

Special Abilities: Being part of the Reptile Cycle, Yurishizu can choose to exhibit reptilic physical features such as scales, a tail, reptile eyes, fangs, etc... He can also secrete neurotoxic poisons of varying levels, the stronger the poison, the harded it is to create it, creating poison tires Yurishizu quickly, although he has learned to create specific poisons for each body part, allowing him to disable opponents easilly, this tires him greatly too.

Weakness: Using Unexpected moves on him; Although he loves mixing his moves and doing improvised, unexpected moves to be sure to hit, Yurishizu’s not used to fight this kind of opponent (Ironic, he is weak against his own style), Yurishizu is also sucky against opponents that attack in quick succesion; He is not that much of an experienced fighter and needs some time to think his next move.

Okay...there’s one of the characters I use for a story I currently write: He has flaws, he has possitive things, he some weaknesses, he’s got that “past experience” thing (A rival, fake name) and has room for development (Or so I have been told). I didn’t go all detail mode because I said it was going to be as simple as possible, now I will proceed with the Mary Sue:

Name: Faery Diana Goldshine

Age: 16, but she is so mature she looks older and has better curves.

Hair: All colors known by humans and some undiscovered (Ultra Rainbow)

Eyes: Her eye color changes to match her mood.

Species: ½ Saiyajin ½ Tsufurujin ½ God ½ Catgirl ½ Angel ½ Desk ½ Mudkip ½ Dragon ½ Demon ½ Alien ½ Pure Essence 1/100000 Human (Mary Sues are Inmune to Maths if you didn’t notice)

“Personallity”: Faery is good at everything, everyone loves her Supermodel champion body and Saint personallity. She can learn new things in 30 seconds and master them to World-Champion level in 1 hour of procrastination. She is the best person in the world, and will always help even if it means scrweing up other’s dreams...as long as she can help that little kid, it’s all justified, right??? She is also very smart! Seriouslly! She had an IQ of 678 when she was born, and instead of being recieved by a doctor to this world, she got out of her mom by herself! When her true love (Mary Sue crap) is in danger, she can’t control herself until he is safe to confort her and stop destroying everything in her path.

Special Abilities: Faery can turn into Legendary Super Saiyajin 9, she has 4 oversized wings on her back; 2 angel and 2 demon, Faery can destroy galaxies and recreate Big Bangs if she sneezes, has extreme psychic powers, she can turn into any animal discovered and undiscovered by human and alien alike, she has all 800000000 Pokemons (all at level 100, naturally), Faery’s hair also provides WI-FI! Her sweat cures Cancer and her saliva heals AIDS... She can do any Jutsu, Spell, Tech, Overdrive, Hack and Guitar Solo known in existance...and she can also play goddess with our lives at will.

Weakness: Excuse me?

That is a Mary Sue, are you sure you want a character that poorly made? I’m sure you don’t.

WATCH OUT: The "Low-Profile!Sue"

As you might have thought, I'm explaining the majority of the cases in extremes...Because in reality THEY ARE that extreme...but there are some case in which the Suethor isn't that (enphasis on "that") dumb and actually make them more sneaky... They aren't that smart, but still smarter than everyone, and can do anything. They don't have that mad potential, but still can learn things to World-Champion level in a day... See? That kind of things. These are harder to detect (albeit slightly) as they require you to read more than the character description (and that is already painful). If you need an example...well, I already said them. Just look at the above sections, and water them down...Boila!

V) Final Thoughts/Conclussion

All in all, we can say Mary Sue = EPIC FAIL and all it’s synonyms, it’s an excuse for character, and hopefully you understand and know what a Mary Sue is now, or know a little more about them, whatever, just make sure to pass on these Honorable Teachings to generations to come, so they don’t create Mary Sues. Now for some final tips before closing:

-PREVENT USING SELF-INSERT! Using Self-Inserts in fanfic/Original works might mean EPIC FAIL; There are few people that can actually insert themselves and not be Mary Sues/Story ruiners (Akira Toriyama!), and if you are decided to use a Self-insert, don’t make it based COMPLETELLY off you: Just have it have some of your qualities (See Nishiki Rikkudo in my gallery; perfect example) or simply create character based off you, but don’t use it on stories. Now, I was a little extreme over there, you CAN use a Self-Insert, but handle with care , only do so if you know what you are doing.

-Giving your character flaws is good, but there is some people that just try TOO hard and overdo it, creating the Anti-Sue, which is just as annoying as the Mary Sue...Balance is the answer.

-Again, Watch out for the Low-Profile!Sue. These are "low profile" Sues that usually have the above mentioned qualities, albeit in a most sneaky way... Like, for example, they won't be destroying the whole galaxy with their attacks, only 1/4, if you know what I mean.

If you read it all, thank you a lot and I hope it helped you.