Official Mary Sue Thread

[Zekurom]

On the subject of Sues, one of the most common types is the Sympathetic Sue. This Sailor Moon OC is an example about how bad it can get:

My mother died giving birth to me, so I'm an only child...
My father was killed in Iraq when I was 2 then I was put into an orphanage...
When I was three I was kidnapped and augmented into a soldier called a CRUSADER...
The war ended when I was 15, and all my friends were dead...I'm the last CRUSADER...
When I was 16, I found out that I'm the wielder of a sword that almost everyone is trying to kill me for...
I met the girl of my dreams, who was shortly later killed...
You think YOUR life sucks? THINK AGAIN!!!!
—The introduction to an unidentified Sailor Moon(!) OC

the point: If you wish for your character to be sympathetic, don't pile on too many over-the-top accidents or make them angst in the most whiny and 'PITY MEEEEE!' way possible.

I think the main problem there is that the events really don't go into much detail, meaning that we don't have much to feel sympathy for. It may be "obvious" what's going on, but unless you can actually express the pain the character feels, and what happened to make him/her feel that pain, the reader is not going to be able to sympathize. If it were possible to actually describe all those events in a prologue, and make the character actually look like he's been through it, it really would make the character seem sympathetic. Because it doesn't, it seems whiny and over-the-top.

The root of most "Mary Sues" is writers trying to stuff all the details into a character that they can. An angsty past is no exception.

A quick sketch of a scene for the "my mother died at birth" part might look as follows:

The door of the emergency room burst open as a bed was quickly wheeled through it. "Nurse!" barked the doctor. "What's the stat on the mother?"

"Six centimetres!"

"Not her dilation, her vital signs!" cried the doctor.

"Her heart is fibrillating severely. Her blood pressure is through the roof, and she's not breathing."

The mother lay motionless on the bed. Her husband was looking at her, eyes fixed on her but also at the area between her legs, where a pool of red liquid was slowly spreading.

They took a sharp left turn, and the husband asked the doctor desperately, "How is she? Will she make it?"

The doctor gave him a blank, sympathetic look. "Unfortunately, sir, I don't think so."

"Please," said the husband, his voice shaking. "Do anything you can."

"I will," said the doctor, suddenly taking another left turn, and bursting through another pair of doors.

* * *

The father-to-be sat down in a chair, heart too filled with anxiety to speak. He looked at the vital monitor, which was still showing irregular patterns.

"We can't do much because the baby is there and we don't want to harm it," said the doctor.

The father could not say anything. He simply continued staring at the monitor, which suddenly showed a flatline.

At the same moment, the mother's cervix finished dilating, and the baby started coming out. The father finally let out a cry of despair and held his head in his hands.

"My wife... my beatiful wife..." he muttered, tears flowing onto his hands.

"This is my fault! This is all my fault!" he cried, hands suddenly off his head. He got up and slammed his fist into the ground. "If only I had been more careful!"

"Mr. [unidentified]," said the midwife, interrupting his father. "Here is your new baby boy."

The midwife was holding a small baby, lying naked with his knees curled up, and crying very loudly. His father was also crying, and continued doing so as he held the boy in his hands that he knew would never have a real mother.

There they sat, crying father holding crying son, for a short while.

It's probably loaded with factual, medical, and contextual inaccuracies (and is awfully generic), but you get the point. If you show and not just tell, you can get away with a Sympathetic Sue. It's just that most authors never bother with the "show" part.

[jasonwolf]

I was hoping this thread was about real mary sue's not people who can't stand a change to the canon in a FAN FIC (referign to the whole older then 10 discussion which btw I've never had a trainer at age 10. even when I play the games I sort of rewrite it for myself where I am my own age). My lastest story is working on using a mary sue for good. it mostly involves the character starting op and then usng a method from video games called abilities where he starts with all his powers but then loses them. I think I got how that happens pretty well sorted out.

[Zekurom]

I was hoping this thread was about real mary sue's not people who can't stand a change to the canon in a FAN FIC (referign to the whole older then 10 discussion which btw I've never had a trainer at age 10. even when I play the games I sort of rewrite it for myself where I am my own age). My lastest story is working on using a mary sue for good. it mostly involves the character starting op and then usng a method from video games called abilities where he starts with all his powers but then loses them. I think I got how that happens pretty well sorted out.

That's less of a "Mary Sue" and more of an "Anti-Sue". If it were a bog Mary Sue, the character would stay "op" throughout.

[jasonwolf]

well that was sort of the point to it. They start op and lose it so then the mary sue is gone, but it devloped the character as a cocky I have UNLIMITED POWAR!!! sort of guy, and soon as those go away he's now stuck with his problems without his powers to get him through them.

[Faye Valentine]

To me, the most obnoxious Mary Sues are a) where it's a really obvious attempt to just write the author into the plot (such as "American exchange students" in Harry Potter fics - it's clearly just an American author who wants to go to Hogwarts, especially as these exchange students don't actually exist in-canon), b) where the character is way too much like the protagonist. In the Harry Potter roleplaying I used to do, people would always make these characters who were more or less clones of Harry Potter ("oh really, you're a Gryffindor and the Quidditch Seeker and a half-blood? and you speak Parseltongue. okay, I'm done here...") In Pokemon, this is like when people try to make their characters just like Ash, with his same Pokemon and everything - although I'm not sure why you'd want to be just like Ash when Ash is really stupid, at least in the anime.

[Zekurom]

well that was sort of the point to it. They start op and lose it so then the mary sue is gone, but it devloped the character as a cocky I have UNLIMITED POWAR!!! sort of guy, and soon as those go away he's now stuck with his problems without his powers to get him through them.

Actually, that's not even an Anti-Sue, that's just a regular cocky guy who thinks he has it all.

[jasonwolf]

He's far from thinking that. Especially with my latest revision. I've re-arrenged his specific powers to change the cause of his nomadic life. yes a terrorist organization turned his brother into a bomb, but not one that would wipe out his town. Nomad did that unleashing what I call Krimson. A mash up between a limit break and a super sayin Krimson is achieved when Nomad is completely stressed out or mortally wounded (a last act of defiance thing). It's not all his powers going haywire or anything but rather its one. just one. His telekinesis. His pain becomes so great that he is somehow able to induce it on every one around him. This litterally makes everyone around him cry blood (due to their veins bursting inside them.) its a grim story... anyway specifcally whent he bomb went off Nomad was trying to save his brother, but of course couldn't and then Krimson activated slaughtering his entire town.

Now you're probably thinking so he's OP and did it to stop from hurting people. No. he jsut had no reason to be there. everyone was dead. So with that power, magic power btw, in sucha world of technology he didn't know what the world would think of him. So he's just been sitting around waiting really.

Also when I say he is the sort of UNLIMITED POWER sort of guy he only boasts about it to those he actualy fights who also have even capablities. think of a specticale fighter like god of war.