2d4chan - User contributions [en]

Hc Svnt Dracones

2020-09-20T19:04:12Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:B0FF:62CA:C5D1:828A: /* The Fluff */

{{heresy}}
[[Image:Chakats in RPGs.png|right|thumb|In case you had any doubt this was made by furries.]]

'''Hc Svnt Dracones''' (or HSD) is an RPG made by and for [[furries]]. Despite saying multiple times in the beginning that this is a [[Transhumanist]] RPG a la [[Eclipse Phase]], the fluff, crunch and accessories make it very obvious that this RPG was made solely so you could make your fursona. The cries of "but we're really just trying to help you get in touch with your human side guys!" get drowned out by how awful humanity is depicted, and by how much time they spend jerking off (literally and figuratively) the furries as bastions of the future. They partially write this off as the "spirit" of humanity getting corrupted. With Ayn Rand levels of shilling for the GLORIOUS CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY and an understanding of biology that would make your average high school graduate cringe, HSD shows little to no self-awareness and is solely focused on making furries. At least [[Ironclaw]] has decent enough crunch and fluff to justify the setting, and if you want you can swap out the furries for regular fantasy races too. HSD does not have either saving grace.

There is a second edition of the book, which throws away most of the crunch (but not the fluff) of the first book after they realized that the crunch was horribly imbalanced shit. In case you needed a further reason to regard this RPG in horror, their website sells 3D Printed miniatures with [[/d/|realistic animal vaginas]]. God help us all.

==The Fluff==
This is mostly based off of stuff from the first edition. A fair warning: one of the books implies that the history as presented below might have just been Megacorp propaganda to subdue the masses.

Sometime in the far future, humans make giant 3D printer bots that can crunch entire plots of land into materials, which allows for the rapid development of technology in the setting. Nevermind the amount of damage this would cause to the ecosystem. Eventually, every single Megacorp on Earth decides to give the collective governments the middle finger, and move to Mars so they can become GLORIOUS CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY, UNIMPEDED BY THE WEIGHT OF GOVERNMENT. Ignore the fact that Mars was not terraformed at this point, they still need a source of food not beholden to Earth, and that Mars gets less sunlight - we have furries to make!

The first furry was made at a celebration of giving Earth the middle finger, much to the horror of everyone. The Mark I furry was an uplifted animal with human-level intelligence, genetically modified into a [[servitor]]-like obedience. This essentially made them a genetically modified slave-race. Justified outcries of morality and ethics arose immediately, as did reports of [[Magical Realm|people fucking said slave race]], because of course, they would try to fuck them. HSD implies that the reports of people fucking the Mark I furries was just drama stirred up by the media but then ''why even mention the reports in the first place?'' The collective governments of Earth immediately set out to [[Heresy|deliver the banhammer to these abominations against nature right from the get-go]], but they ''just so happen'' to be not fast enough, and the plans for the Mark I furry are sent elsewhere.

Offscreen, the governments of Earth get ready to go to war with the Megacorps, but a space virus from the stars crashes down on Earth, which then turns into a computer virus that launches every single weapon of mass destruction, killing most of humanity. Half of the Earth gets covered in weird blood-crystal stuff that outstretches towards the moon.

Without the pesky governments around, the Megacorps get to cranking out more furries, because humanity is royally boned at this point. The Mark I furry plans are immediately discarded for the development of the Mark II furry. Dubbed the "vectors," they are made by taking human fetuses, and sticking animal bits on them which makes them better for reasons... yes I know the way genetics and immune systems work doesn't allow for this, shut up. Over time, with lots and lots of boning, the vectors become the dominant race of the setting, outnumbering humans and eventually fully supplanting them entirely. The final humans of the setting got murdered trying to see how the Earth was doing, finding out that the blood-crystal stuff was sentient and very angry.

This leads us into the present day, where the vectors have collectively grown to be much, much better than humans! Except not really. The bird-type vectors nearly got hunted to extinction by the cat-type vectors over the span of THREE different race-wars. The wars were justified by the vectors succumbing to their animalistic genetic tendencies, falling into preconceived human stereotypes. This doesn't make any goddamn sense because genetically speaking, the vectors are more human than animal, and it undermines their supposed superiority if they start genociding each other due to their animal genes. Add onto this the fact that human media depicting animals is extremely rare, and it becomes another instance of the author writing with his fursona in mind.

If you aren't convinced that the fluff is kind of just a flimsy excuse to inject the author's [[Magical Realm]] into an RPG, every Vector has a built-in safety made when there were still humans around to give a damn. Whenever a human voice speaks to them, a Vector will fall into a lull-like trance that makes them highly impressionable. Ignoring the fact that you would think that a sufficiently advanced race with command over biotechnology would cut something like this out, this doesn't have any major impact save for an excuse to have devices that play human media (which are extremely rare) turn into date-rape drugs.

There's no Big E to make an Imperium so let's go with the next best thing, The Helghast-like human nation.

==The Crunch (1st Edition)==
When you make a character, you get to choose three things, based on what kind of furry you want to be: Family (what general class of furry you want to be EX: Canidae for dogs), species (self-explanatory), and morphism (Body shape. This is how you become a taur.) After that, you get to assign classes of dice to four stats: Mind, Body, Community, and Economy. There are five categories of substats that sort of act like skills, which determine the number of dice you get to roll for a particular check: Dexterity, Resilience, Acuity, Strength, and Presence. This seems innocent enough until you start to think about just how much overlap there is between the three "physical" stats. After all, there is not a ton of difference between Mind:Acuity, which is about sensing things, and Body:Acuity, which is about feeling things with your sensory organs.

The last column, the Economy stat, is the thing that makes the entire system go out the window. Ignoring the idea of substats in economy making little to no sense, the Economy stat is a measure of your Ledger, which is a thing that grants you money every so often by simply... doing nothing. That's right, the biggest incentive to go out and go on an adventure as a murderhobo, cold hard cash (or credits in this case) is handed to you for free by sitting on your ass and doing literally nothing. There is, therefore, no incentive to do anything in the setting, when combined with the fact that the Corps are mechanically able to retcon anything that happened as something completely minor. You will never make an impact on the story, the setting, or anything else in furry space taking the game as written. Truly, in the grimdarkness of the far future, there are only furries.

By min-maxing the Economy stat you make it very, very simple to buy pretty much anything you want while still having points to allocate so you aren't a withered, anti-social husk of a furry. Within a few sessions of doing nothing, it is entirely capable to buy the strongest weapon in the game, with a set of power armor to lift said weapon, and then absolutely trivialize every single combat you might want to get involved with. It is no surprise that the Economy stat was totally scrapped from character generation in the 2nd edition.

==External Link==
*[https://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/purplexvi/hc-svnt-dracones/ FATAL and Friend's review of HSD]

[[Category:Roleplaying]]

Chakat

2020-09-20T18:32:03Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:B0FF:62CA:C5D1:828A: /* Overview */

{{Fail}}
{{/d/}}
{{WTF}}
{{Plot Armour}}
{{heresy}}
[[Image:Chakat.jpg|right|thumb|If this arouses you, kindly turn your faggot self over to the [[Heresy|Ordo Herecticus]] for cleansing by fire. (or you can submit to [[Slaanesh]])]]

In every subculture, there are outcasts. Even [[furries]]. And that is where the '''Chakat''' come in.

The ultimate creation of deranged mental-patient [http://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Bernard_Doove Bernarde Doove], a notoriously bad writer whose books take place in a heavily-modified version of the [[Star Trek]] universe dubbed only [[Magical Realm|Chakona Space]], Chakats are a spacefaring genetically-engineered group of [[Slaanesh|hermaphrodite]] [[Ultramarines|Mary Sue]] [[Heresy|Telepathic]] Space Cats that make your average Furry look as reasonable as [[Daemonette|Reasonable Daemonette]]. Widely mocked for their race being a group of flagrant [[Mary Sue]]s, Chakats are an ideal example of a threat to every single internet subculture in existence; as despised by Furries as they are by fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls. Whilst they have roughly one-twelfth of one percent (and that's being generous) the exposure any other spacefaring subculture of any other existing universe, from [[Star Wars RPG|Star Wars]] to the [[Warhammer 40,000|the 41st Millenium]], fans, usergroups, and communities keep running into these fucking things, invariably with facepalm-worthy results.

But some of you here would ask, "But if the Chakats are Mary Sues like any other, then why can't you ignore them and their fanbase?". Here is when you are wrong, compared to some Mary Sue which are a blend of a few different types and classifications, [[What|the Chakats are classified as a 100% distilled and purified fusion of a Mary Sue, Child Sue, Marty Stu (when in male mode), Suenomorph, Sympathetic Sue, Black-Hole Sue, Purity Sue, Einstein Sue, Invoked Sue, Fan-Service Sue (although how anybody can fap to these beasts is beyond reasoning), Implausible Sue, Suemanimals, Chosen-One Sue, Holy Sue and a Mary Sue Race.]] [[Rage|Essentially they are the ''ultimate Mary Sue.'']] Thanks, [[TVTropes]]. You're off the hook for now, [[Kaldor Draigo|Draigo]].

Do not confuse them with the similar looking [[Wemic]]s.

==Important Warning==

For your own sake, ''never'' try looking them up on Google Image Search if you have safe-search off. You have been ''[[PROMOTIONS|warned]]''. If you, for some reason decided to turn it off, bring along a bottle of brain bleach and eye bleach.

==Overview==
[[Image:Chakats in RPGs.png|right|thumb|Goddamnit, [[Furries]].]]

Pair a cat-taur hermaphrodite with the sort of godless "we is superior" fluff provided by the likes of [[Matt Ward]] for the [[Ultramarines]], and crank the dial to 11, and you get your average Chakat. Engineered to be perfect survivors and colonizers (according to their creator), they were also engineered to be attractive and [[Psyker|psionically]] gifted with [[Gay|empathetic]] abilities, making them always able to understand everyone all the time. They are the most psychologically stable race in the universe and they can use their psychic abilities to listen to your thoughts [[Powergamer|from a solar system away]].

They are the strongest physically and for the most part [[Mary Sue|perfect in every single way]]. Hating them at ''all'' makes you a [[Heresy|horrible person]] who, in the eyes of the rest of the world in Chakona Space, should be killed or forced to repent, and ''not'' wanting to [[Furry|fuck one]] makes you a horrible deviant who needs to be cured. By turning you into a [[FAIL|Chakat]] yourself, if need be.

[[RAGE|Fucking serious]] Just have them fight the [[Ultramarines|XIII Legion]] then, not Ward's little band of butt boys the ''proper Legion''.

[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/ChakonaSpace Even TVTropes, a site known for being skilled at categorizing types of Mary Sues, and one that - whatever their flaws - goes to great pains to be neutral on the subject, openly acknowledges that they are basically an entire race of Mary Sues.]

They prefer to be called by "hermaphroditic" pronouns (but are really just made up "non-binary" pronouns meant to appeal to the Chakat's nonexistent LGBTQ+ audience), such as shi and hir, which is by its own self ''hereticus diabolus''; readers are advised to say "fuck that noise" and grab a [[bolter|fucking gun]] while awaiting the cyclonic torpedoes of the [[Exterminatus]] which would be justly declared upon any world where such Slaaneshi-tier abominations have taken foot. If [[/d/]], [[/tg/]], and [[FAIL|fchan]] had a child, the Chakat would be the product of their sweaty lust, and ''all three [[Exterminatus|would advocate immediate abortion before the abomination had a chance to fester]]''. It is, perhaps, one of the only things in existence that furries ''and'' not-furries can agree upon - the Chakats are that fucking bad.

In their native works of fiction, Chakats are festering piles of sexual derangement; they are [[Slaanesh|hermaphrodites]], take on multiple mates (of multiple species), and general lend themselves to [[/d/|the most horrifying fetishes the internet has available]]. They, along with [[Mary Sue|a term that adequately describes most Chakats]] started as a fan-fic race in [[Star Trek]], and have since moved on into their own universe which is barely different from it ([[Original character, do not steal|just enough so it can say it's its own setting]]).

Rather like the [[Twilight|Twilight Saga]] is for bad literature, Chakats represent everything that is [[AIDS|foul and disgusting]] about furries in general. Debauchery and fetish indulgence is rampant, and Humans who oppose the likes of the Chakats are a persecuted minority, treated as Terrorists. Much like any furry, these aren't damning in-and-of themselves; it's the way they are flaunted and shoved down your throats in the most obnoxious ways possible that disgusts even the most [[Neckbeard|reasonable people]]. Some players of [[Dark Heresy]] and [[d20 Modern]] have staged glorious campaigns around these, in which the Chakats are cast down for the glory of the Imperium. To further drive home the [[FAIL|prevalence]] of Chakats, they were the headlining race featured in [[Hc Svnt Dracones]], a [http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/purplexvi/hc-svnt-dracones/ hilariously bad posthuman PNP RPG.]

==The Foul threat==
In case it wasn't obvious from the above, Chakats are so bad that even other Furries wish to cause an [[Exterminatus]] on them via their mere presence; [[Cultist-chan]] wishes she could inspire this kind of [[rage]]. The problem is that Chakats (or rather, fans thereof) routinely invade other spacefaring universe RPs and games, bringing with them this awesomesauce new race that they just HAVE to play as.

You don't believe us? [[Fur heresy|You ''will'' soon enough.]]

Whilst Warhammer 40K has not been impervious to their [[Heresy|foul attempts]] (as demonstrated [[Chakats Meet the Hammer of the Emperor|here]]), the fact that [[Grimdark|every race in existence hates everyone else]] has done [[PROMOTIONS|an amicable job]] of keeping the [[AIDS|spread]] down. Other far more fortunate franchises such as [[Halo]] whose multiverse is filled with xenophobic fascists, nuclear-armed terrorists, religious nutjobs, eldritch abominations and the fact that more than half of the races will promptly eat them like alien chow, has very little if any influence from Chakat deviance, while established Sci-Fi classics such as [[1984]] and [[Robert Heinlein|Starship Troopers]] have also stayed clear from the plague due to the equally dystopic and warlike nature. Wargames such as Wing Commander, Star Wars, Mass Effect (despite Mass Effect's major villains, [[Old Ones|the Reapers]], being eldritch abominations) and so on, however, have not been nearly as fortunate, with small and thriving Chakat cross-over communities in each. When rooted out as the shameless Mary Sues they are, they are often given the same mercy one might give a pedophile or serial rapist, which is, to say, they are handled with the [[Commissar Fuklaw]] approach.

If you encounter these deranged psychopaths, you are to finish them off immediately, or failing this, immediately contact the [[Commissar|Commissariat]], if not the [[Daemonhunters|Inquisition]]. You do ''not'' want the infection to spread. Perhaps the most thoroughly infiltrated fandom, however, is Star Trek, with entire websites devoted to nothing but Chakat/Star Trek crossover porn. [[God|God]] save us. The only hope Trekkies possibly have now is from the semi-official lore of Star Trek Online, where the [[Chaos|Iconians have finally woken up and are out to burn and enslave the entire galaxy]]. Seriously, in the last episode, one of them literally screams [[Horus|"LET THE GALAXY BURN!!]]. And they actually [[/d/|look hot and sound delicious]], even though they're energy beings. Any sane, any uncorrupted Trekkie would take ten thousand years of Iconian enslavement to one day of Chakat coexistence.

On that note, fucking [http://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Bernard_Doove | Bernarde Doove] deserves to get [[Khorne|brutally and mercilessly beaten up]]. [[Rage|Goddamn Chakats]].

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:FuckingChakats.JPG|Whenever someone asks you why Chakats are tripe, link this image.
Image:WORSETHANCHAINS.jpg|Would you believe that her "condition" is that she's constantly sexually aroused?
</gallery>

==See Also==
*[[Heresy]]
*[[Extra Heresy]]
*[[Furry]]
*[[FATAL]]
*[[Confrontation]]
*[[Chakats Meet the Hammer of the Emperor]]
*https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/690630, because Eastern European teenagers can write better fiction.

[[Category:Not related]]
[[Category:RAGE]]
[[Category:Mary_Sue]]
[[Category:Furry]]

List of Mary Sues

2020-09-20T17:56:19Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:B0FF:62CA:C5D1:828A: /* Mary Sues Case Studies */

{{fail}}
{{flamewar}}
{{Heresy}}

There are too many fucking [[Mary Sues]] in our games and fiction. We know it, and we love to complain about it, because it makes us feel a little better to call a spade a shovel. The original purpose of this list is to provide examples so the phenomenon can be studied, identified and - as a result of the latter - avoided.

(Note: please post Mary Sues in alphabetical order, so they don't fight about who's the better Mary-Sue. Also, this is about fictional characters, so while Canon Sues are acceptable, no real-life examples (even if there is such person named <s>Mary Sue AKA the Scientology founder's wife</s> I'm just adding that for fun). For the sake of peace, religious figures [and possibly mythological characters; particularly when they're from original mythologies] are real-life examples. Also, any characters added to the list without justifying reasons will be removed from this page. If you're going to add a race, please use the list below this one.

==Mary Sues Case Studies==
{{Plot Armour}}
* [[Alice]] from the in-name-only ''[[Resident Evil]]'' movies: A character created for the movies who started out as corporate spy, she has superpowers and is <s>presented as</s> ENTIRELY invincible. She manages to becomes an even bigger Sue when she loses said superpowers yet continues to obliterate armies unscathed. The film refuses to even let other characters do anything but get rescued by her, she's worse than characters written by [[Matthew Ward]]. Later films even gave her clones to explain why she's still in the films. On top of all this, the bitch is played by the director's wife; she's his perfect Mary Sue waifu insert and she's literally sleeping with him to get the job. Don't forget that she dual-wields katanas. And shotguns. And probably Desert Eagles, too.

* Andrew "Ender" Wiggin from Orson Scott Card's Enderverse, and a blatant (almost comical to a serious reader) example at that. What's worse: he only becomes more of this as the story and the books progress. It's even worse in the 2013 movie. At least the books gave the other characters more depth, Ender's feats took more time to achieve, and it contained some POV's that weren't of or about Ender.
** Ender's siblings Valentine and Peter. Ender's sister is a self righteous prig who is only overshadowed by her obnoxious, sociopathic brothers. Peter, Ender's older brother, is even worse. He's a low functioning sociopath, [[What|but intelligent enough that, as a child, he comes up with sophisticated political philosophies that wow academic circles. As an adult, they prove so sophisticated that he's appointed Political Leader of Earth. Despite the fact that a sociopath with absolute power would become a dangerous tyrant as soon as someone refused to do what they say, he doesn't mess up and dies being hailed as a great ruler]]. Yes, this really happens.

* [[Batman]] in an unskilled author's hands. He's a handsome human billionaire who's the pinnacle of human physical prowess and manages to defeat superpowered beings simply because "he had time to prepare" (with few thinking "why don't his opponents also use that time to prepare?"). On top of this he has LITERAL PLOT ARMOR; one of the DC editorial mandates is that Batman is not allowed to be truly defeated (he's usually too popular and has a presence in too much of the DC Universe to be allowed the downtime by editorial, unless it's part of a major storyline such as Knightfall). Because of this a certain tendency for Batman to turn into a Mary Sue is well documented (Read JLA: Act of God and weep; that story was all about starting the First Church of Batman. Or hell, check out the Dark Nights: Metal storyline, where a bunch of Evil Batmen who are variants on an existing superhero attack the DCU as opposed to, say, just doing a whole Evil Justice League like they have multiple times before). While Batman does have plot armor (nearly no one thinks to just shoot him when they get the chance and the few times they do he escapes, and he's never unexpectedly engaged by superhuman opponents who could easily beat him - like Darkseid), the same can be said for other non-superpowered heroes. That being said, there are many ways of adding dramatic tension to such a foregone conclusion situation, and the above mandate only includes actual defeat, so Batman is allowed to fail and make mistakes in certain situations or the villain can escape to cause trouble even after their plan is thwarted, which also helps lessen the Bat-Sue Factor.

* [[Edgy|Billy Butcher from "The Boys"]] (comics and show, especially the comics) is a prime example of a Jerk Sue (An unsympathetic character nevertheless favored in the story, [[TVTropes|according to our frenemeies]]). A superpower-hating vigilante because a "super" raped and killed his wife ("There's a difference between having a sympathetic backstory and actually being sympathetic"), Billy is half Punisher-knockoff, half self-insert/mouthpiece for author Garth Ennis. While most superheroes in this series are notorious for being corporate sellouts who often abuse their powers and sponsorships, Billy is clearly equally motivated by personal prejudice against people with superpowers (something he shares with the author like his prejudice towards religion, especially Christianity; it's no coincidence that Billy's an atheist while the antagonist Homelander is a Christian Pastor). While Billy does help the protagonist Hughie try to get justice for his girlfriend’s death by superhero collateral damage, Billy's reasons are selfish and he's also an edgelord (mean-spirited? check. violent? check. dark clothes? check. created by edgelord author? check. anti-establishment? that's a big check!) , one that nearly turns on Hughie when Hughie starts dating the superhero defector Starlight. Even becoming a villain via wanting to genocide all people with superpowers after he gets them only adds "Villain Sue" to the list, as Billy only loses in the end because he chooses to. He’s also consistently never allowed to be wrong, as any time a character has something to say about Billy or his actions, he has something to throw back at them proving they’re actually wrong due to author fiat ensuring Billy only argues against strawmen. Goes to show that making a Mary Sue an edgelord is just as repellent as the “sweet, inclusive and peace-obsessed” opposite, especially when they’re also the author’s hypocritical, preachy mouthpiece.

* Caius Ballad, the antagonist of ''Final Fantasy XIII-2''. Impractical overdesigned costume? Check. Impractical giant, overdesigned sword? Check. Purple hair? Check. Story-breaking powers? Check. Can't be beaten? Check. Openly called the most powerful ''Final Fantasy'' villain ever by his creator? Check. The only mitigating feature this fool has is that his English VA is Liam O'Brien.

* Darkseid from DC Comics is a rare case where people actually ''like'' someone for being a Sue. He wasn't one at the start of his career - Jack Kirby conceived him as a paper tiger who, for all his grandiose plans and ambitions, was only powerful if people feared him and could be beaten up by two street thugs who didn't know who he was, not anticipating that fans might prefer a villain who was really as intrinsically powerful as Darkseid claimed to be. He's strong and tough enough to go toe-to-toe with Superman, he has laser eyes that can do whatever he wants them to (including killing people instantly or bringing them back to life), he's a masterful schemer who knows all about setting up gambits where he wins no matter what and striking deals with easy ways around them he doesn't mention, most of his minions rival the Justice League in power and on top of all that he's the ruler of an entire planet that reliably goes to shit when he's not around to slap it into shape and sometimes a wide-reaching galactic empire. Despite all this Villain Sue-ness, any attempts to nerf him or bring him down to a more realistic villain level are met with backlash and outrage, and his most celebrated storyline in recent comics history is Final Crisis, in which the heroes required a time-travelling, god-killing bullet to defeat him and he actually forced Batman to abandon his rule against killing. The message is clear: Darkseid is DC's ultimate villain (or close enough to that status that the number of people higher than him can be counted on a hand or two/ doesn't require literal divine intervention etc. to defeat and thus retaining a meaningful conflict) and the fans won't settle for anything less.
** There's a reason for this, by the way: Darkseid and his court neatly fill the archetypal niche of embodiments of "the fucked up things people do when you give them power", with, for example, Gods of Child Abuse and of Torture as two of his chief henchmen. If you're going to have a hero who's about Hope and positive, creative or protective Aspirations (see: Superman, Flash, etc.), a villain who embodies the crushing of hope and negative, destructive Aspirations is incredibly useful. Making such a character a paper tiger can be made to work (see the Crimson King, under Special Cases), but is going to be unsatisfying, usually deeply so.

* Divis Mal from the RPG [[Aberrant]]. Oh, where to begin? Well, first of all on top of being the absolute, balls-out, most powerful Aberrant in the setting, ever, he's super smart, plans for everything, never loses ''no matter what the players do'', and has an ideology that can basically be described as "like Magneto, only ''right''. About ''everything.''" He's also in a loving relationship with a super-attractive partner who is ''also'' super-powerful, and his enemies are all stupid and happen to be straw-stuffed right-wing stereotypes because of course they are. He also serves as a thinly-veiled self-insert fanfic character for the lead game designer (a gay man with issues), and said designer once claimed that the title of the game referred to ''him specifically''. It was all the sequel game could do to take the piss out of all the problems he caused.

* Dr. Doom, depending on the writer. It doesn't help that he's a genius and self-made tycoon with a tragic past, who keeps getting his deaths retconned as body doubles (naming the infamous "Actually a Doombot" trope). Worst case scenarios are when he's written by somebody that forgets that he's a VILLAIN and depicts his rule over Latveria as unrealistically benign, and makes it look like the superheroes are wrong for trying to keep him from taking over the world.

* Elizabeth from ''Bioshock Infinite''. Plot-sustaining power (the key to the whole plot literally rests in her hands), cannot be harmed, <s>makes a grown veteran of war look like an idiot child</s> only if you suck at the game... Regardless, she is routinely placed in easily escapable situations for the pure purpose of being saved when she can plausibly save herself, and makes none of the major (or minor) mistakes in the game. While some claim that she greatly dislikes violence, especially killing, individual interpretations vary depending on whether you view her murders as character arc-defining. To make her comparable to Sues like Lightning and Alice, Ken Levin told the trolls who [[rule 34|34'd]] his perfect wife purpose, which result in a hilarious reverse psychology that gave Ken Levin [[promotions|what he wanted]]. She even gets to be tied into how Fontaine got Jack's (bioshock 1 mc) command code in the first bioshock. Way to ruin the franchise with some conventional plot device.

*[[Elminster]], who is currently having a threesome with the goddess of magic and rad boobies and his adopted super-hot albino elf daughter while simultaneously beating the god of murder in a sword fight with one hand and the god of slavery in a magic fight with the other. Also, he's like a million years old and looks it. Ed Greenwood's self-insert character in the [[Forgotten Realms]], and a big source of "Why doesn't he just do this for us?" questions whenever he appears in questlines. Also, along with the gods of the setting and the Harpers, he's one of the reasons why the Forgotten Realms are in [[Medieval Stasis]].
**Ironically he didn't start out originally like this. Back at the beginning of D&D, Elminster wasn't a massive Mary Sue. Believe it or not, he simply used to be a maxed-out wizard with some additional abilities and stuff that appeared as a Deus Ex Machina in case players had an encounter that was too difficult to overcome, much like Gandalf in [[The Hobbit]].

*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TedsiCaV2B4 Empress Theresa] is a good example of the "waifu" theory of Mary Sues and the Doyalist definition of Mary Sues, where the author's relationship to the character is the defining factor. Short version: Deranged author who can't take criticism creates his perfect waifu, hands her the world, and refuses to edit the resulting masterpiece, and posts the result for sale on Amazon. Criticism results, which in turn results in internet arguments on a scale that is ''amazing'' (by themselves, they dwarf all of the arguments and criticisms of the Twilight franchise put together, with the unsettling add-on that this is all the author's mindset).

*Every author self-insert. Especially those found in high-school writing assignments.

*Green Lanterns from Earth, especially Hal Jordan. All the human Green Lanterns are regularly shown to be the best Lanterns in the core because they ALL have indomitable willpower, skill, and courage, surpassing others who have been in the corps for decades. Most other lanterns exist only to be killed off as a means of showing how dangerous a threat is. They're only ever effective when they are helping the Human ones. The most Green Lanterns ever killed was during the Emerald Twilight story arc and they were killed by, you guessed it, Hal Jordan.

*Haoh from Shaman King. If there is any villain that can truly be called a Mary Sue, it's him, most other villains with this accusation still get defeated. Haoh not only proves invincible throughout the whole series, able to easily pull of feats that are impossible for everybody else, he also has the ability to revive himself if killed, meaning even if the heroes beat him, which they state is impossible in a straight-up fight, it would be pointless, because he'd just back even stronger. Worse is that he goes around saying how awful humans and everyone, even the writer, seems to agree with him because the series ends with him winning, only delaying his plans to kill humanity because reasons, and gets away with a number of atrocities that would make numerous the [[Warriors Of Chaos]] jealous.

*IG-88 in the ''Star Wars'' expanded universe, given that he easily breaks into the second Death Star and uploads his personality into it and takes control with nobody noticing, and before that single-handedly took over a planet.

*[[James Bond]]. To what degree varies, but the Roger Moore version is the worst offender: he's unbeatable at just about everything, never loses his composure, a ladies' man to an unrealistic degree (even lesbians and villains who stand for everything he opposes switch sides after a dicking from Bond, not to mention that time he had sex with a lesbian was questionable consent at best...so Bond gets away with actual sexual assault if not outright rape), implausibly intelligent, a crack shot, and basically unkillable. In the books, he is an unlikable git and an alcoholic, yet still gets shit done.

*James T. Kirk of [[Star Trek]], but only when written by William Shatner. While in TOS, Roddenberry himself outright stated Kirk was his Author Avatar and that he wanted the show to have the ambiance of Kirk being able to have any woman he desired, Kirk was still allowed to occasionally fail or make mistakes in certain situations. For other non-Shatner written works, the Suedom factor is kept under control by factors gone into under the list found under "Somewhat Special Cases", below.

*John Galt, Dagny Taggart and most of the cast from Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", which figures given her literature's reputation for being barely-disguised political sermon. Galt frequently has the narrative grind to a halt in order to focus on his inane views, somehow single-handedly grinds the economy to a halt by founding a libertarian utopia where no 'communists' can hold him or other similar geniuses back, and is shilled as the only sane man after the rest of the world becomes a dystopic hellhole without said "genius". Then there's the primary female character, a wannabe railroad tycoon trying to get a new train line built despite the fact that "evil socialists" can't keep them running without crashing every few hours because of mean ol' unions and regulations oppressing the poor upper class. Said woman somehow manages to bed Hank Rearden, local inventor of a metal alloy supposedly even stronger than steel called Rearden Metal. Yes, just drips with creativity, don't it? It's telling that the Bioshock series, based off her work, is far better received and a more realistic depiction, generally due to taking the prospect of a single man basically playing God to its logical conclusion (I.E. another dystopia but now with blackjack and hookers).

*John Kramer, the "Jigsaw Killer" from the ''Saw'' films. Pick any character you know of with a long list of skills or attributes, this guy has more, and he keeps getting away for a half dozen movies. He's also influenced people to the point that even after he dies, some of them copy his actions and ideas and think they're doing good things.

*Jon Snow (especially the show version): While this is in the books as well, it is more evident in the show and he is currently dying from a mutiny in the books. Being a bastard is a bad thing in Westeros so he gets sent to the wall, but it's uphill from there. He gets a Valyrian steel blade (which is incredibly rare and an heirloom of noble houses) in his first week. He has a pet Direwolf puppy like his siblings, but of course his looks unique. From here he gets named as squire and successor to the commander of the Night's Watch (though this does cause some resentment among his peers). Later on he meets Wildings where he spares one who turns out to be a woman; it's obvious where this goes... they don't get along, they fall in love, have sex and spend some time together, something forces them apart and she dies. She also has red hair, which stands out because among Wildings its considered lucky. While he gets stabbed like in the books, in the show he dies from it then gets resurrected by Melisandre/the Lord of Light. He's revealed to be the bastard child of Rhaegar Targereyn and Lyanna Stark, making him Westeros' rightful king, as well as Daenerys' nephew - but that doesn't stop him from having sex with aunt Daenerys*, and this time the incest is portrayed positively! Also, him beating Ramsay Bolton (see below); that's right, Jon's so Mary Sue his plot armor trumps the plot armor of another Mary Sue (to be fair, though, he was actually on the verge of loosing the big battle to Ramsay right up until the moment his ass gets saved by his little sister and about four thousand mounted knights.) While some of the earlier traits don't necessarily equal a Mary Sue, they add up... oh, they add up (*Daenerys, a warqueen who brought dragons back from extinction among other things, makes mistakes and suffers consequences that would seem to impact her Sue-factor if they didn't always turn out to be functionally inconsequential in comparison to her astounding triumphs through casual part-time parenting.) Book Jon is way more well rounded as a character, where it is pointed out that he actually had a decent life as a bastard before coming to the Watch, and several choices he made ended up biting him in the ass come the mutiny.

*Jotaro Kujo, from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 3 and 4 (And part 6 but not in part 6... we'll get to that later). He's pretty much invincible like Kenshiro, but unlike Kenshiro, he didn't train a single day to be as hax as he is (His Stand "Star Platinum" is really strong, at the cost of short range, but plot gets in the way and he always gets close enough to ORAORA the bad guys). Also unlike Kenshiro, he is an asshole to everyone, but never suffers any consequences from it (Women literally ADORE him despite his jerkass attitude, because 80's). He spends the entire trip to Egypt spurting out massive amounts of [[Just as planned]] against every villain of the week, or simply getting powers as plot demands, some of the most outrageous examples being: The use of "Star Finger", which completely negates the previously stated range weakness; His "battle" against Steely Dan, where he DID get humilliated but retributed it tenfold in the end; His "battle" against Alessi, where he gets to beat a grown man unconscious with his bare fists despite being turned back into a SEVEN YEAR OLD; His battle against main villain DIO where he wins DIO's time stopping powers for bullshit reasons and wins; and, even more ridiculously, being able to RESURRECT his very dead Grandpa Joseph by [[what|using his stand for blood transfusing and heart-resetting]]. In part 4 he mellows down a lot, most notably [[FAIL|getting beaten by a rat]], but that doesn't prevent him from beating the shit out of the main villain Kira TWICE and stealing the spotlight from Uncle Josuke (The titular Jojo of part 4) on his final battle; too bad Josuke!. Part 6 however, does a great job at not only nerfing but rounding him altogether, the Jojo this time being his own daughter, Jolyne Cujoh (Note that is not Kujo), a delinquent who ends out in prison and resents him greatly for being an awful, absent father and constantly reminds him of it. He attempts to "fix" things but [[Just as planned|falls into one of main villain Pucci's schemes]] and is rendered comatose for great part of the story, when he latter regains his powers (With a significant decrease in durability) and comes to terms with Jolyne, the villain becomes Godlike and ends out killing him along with the entire universe; too bad Shonen Jump!, now seinen is Araki's best friend. In Pucci's universe he is a complete spineless weakling, but in case that was a bit too much, reality resets again and creates [[Awesome|a new universe free of the Joestars Tragic Fate and Part 3's bullshit]]. PD: In the Videogame Eyes of Heaven he is even worse, but this entry is already too long so i'll only say the creators weren't too good with resolutions.

*Kai Leng, from ''[[Bioware#Mass_Effect_3_.28The_Downfall.29|Mass Effect 3]]''. You're constantly told he's a badass assassin, but when he shows up, Shepard's crew suddenly become drooling idiots so Leng can strut about, act tough, and monologue. He brags about killing Thane (alien assassin squadmate from the previous game) even though the latter was hobbled by a terminal illness requiring daily medical care and Thane ''STILL'' got the drop on Kai Leng; Thane even says himself "That other assassin should be embarrassed. A terminally-ill Drell kept him from reaching his target." When you "win" the "fight" against him on Thessia, he still gets away, utterly unaffected by the crumbling architecture that stops Shepard from pursuing him. By the end of the fight, you've advanced the plot a grand total of nowhere, regurgitated information you already have, and been hamstrung as a player because the writer wants his character to look cool. He is yet another antagonist dropped onto a story filled with them, but is nothing more than a costume, sword, and book of one-liners. Unlike Saren from ME1, we have no connection with this douchebag because the story doesn't give him enough screen time to develop into anything.
** Alternate take: What appears to be Sue-ness is BioWare writing him as a Hate Sink. (Basically a character designed to be hated and nothing else, [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HateSink ask those smashers at TV Tropes for more info].) BioWare were using the Reapers as cool villains and leaning into the Illusive Man getting the Darth Vader treatment of the tragic, sympathetic villain who can possibly redeem himself with his death, so Leng became the game's villainous punching bag. Given what a gut punch the final battle is, clearly they wanted Leng's ultimate downfall to give the player a moment of catharsis so they could take a small victory where they got it. And for that to work, it had to be satisfying, and that meant he had to get on the player's nerves without an excuse or understandable motive to undercut their focused rage against him. Note that during the final battle against him, Shepard spends the whole time dressing him down as a coward who can only win by running away and after beating him, smashes his stupid sword and guts him like a fish with their omni-blade. [[Awesome|"That was for Thane, you son of a bitch!"]]

*[[Fist of the North Star|Kenshiro]], nothing can kill him and he's morally flawless, superior to everyone-fucking-else. At least until Shin Saga in the anime, where he starts fucking up often, even with his super kung-fu laser ninja powers. Most battles are curb-stomps until later on because ''it's a fucking show from the 80's''. Do note, however, that Kenshiro loses a ''lot,'' especially later on, and mostly wins his hardest battles because he's the only one worth a shit left alive by that point in the series.

*Kratos from ''[[God of War]]''. He curb-stomps fucking gods due to [[plot armor]] (and because one of them decided to give a bloody psychopath the powers of a god; MENSA applicant right there) and he has threesomes with complete strangers, even though he is meant to be grieving for the death of his family that he himself murdered. Oh and the rules for how death works change whenever it's convenient for him. Err, some of this is because most of the gods he kills with super-powerful items, including Blade of Olympus, the God of War universe's version of Zeus' lightning bolts the cyclops gave him to defeat the titans, which has been infused with all the power of the Greek God of War. And he is later revealed to house the Power of Hope since GoW1, a power strong enough to kill gods. Now he is starting a new family in Norse mythology land Midgard while STILL having the "godly" super strength despite the blade of Olympus drained all his power and gave it all to the world.(Note that he clearly didn't give up his combat experience nor his genetics as a demi-god son of Zeus. Even without those things, he's at minimum a heavily trained demi-god from the strongest of the Greek gods.) At least he acknowledged how fucking awful he was in the past and tried to be a good father toward his new son Atreus, but still keeping his no gods allowed policy.

*Lana Lang from the TV show ''Smallville'' (note; Smallville is not considered canon to the Superman story by DC Comics). Almost big a Mary Sue as Bella from Twilight; almost because she actually has a few useful skills, but she learns them unrealistically quickly (becoming a black belt in martial arts in ''one week''). She has the cliche orphan story but with a unique spin for maximum snowflake effect (her parents were killed by a meteor strike), everyone in the story loves her with the exception of some villains (the key word is SOME), and she's treated as someone who can do no wrong. Lana even got on the cover of TIME magazine, in-universe, as a child! She serves as a wedge between Clark and having a relationship with any other girl and between Clark and his eventual Superman destiny. Clark technically sacrificed his father to save her! In one episode, Clark rewound time on a day in which Lana died, and instead lost his father.

*Lightning from ''Final Fantasy XIII'', she is basically a pink-haired Cloud without any of Cloud's likable personality traits. She's currently the NEW AND ASTONISHING HEAVENLY Valkyrie that fights a purple Sephiroth in her new game "Lightning's Return". Not that we care, but she was created by Motomu Toriyama ([[Matt Ward]]'s Japanese cousin), a man with a Chris-Chan-like persona and Matthew Ward-style writing who is now continuously raping the franchise. He has a waifu love for Lightning like Paul has for Alice. Lightning is comparable to Alice on many levels, which says a lot, really. She also has tons of fucking DLC "costumes" dedicated to her so the player could dress her up and fap her to death. This is so fucking shameful that I'm crazy enough to believe Alice is a much capable heroine. Somebody kill me, please. Oh, just recently, Toriyama decided to have Lightning become a guest character in a future Final Fantasy. So not only is the franchise gonna suffer the rotting Emperor syndrome, but Lightning is now the literal goddess of every Final Fantasy game? Seriously, have you ever seen Paul doing such disgusting things with Alice? Like forcing Alice into an actual ''Resident Evil'' game (well, the ''Resident Evil'' franchise is dead as well)? Motomu Toriyama is officially worse than Paul Anderson!!
** Gets worse: Toriyama has stated that Lighting is the "first" strong female character in any ''Final Fantasy''. Even ignoring the dozens of better-written female characters, some of which he himself has written, the "strong" meaning just physical doesn't work either; FF7's Tifa (a game he worked on, btw) can punch tanks to death.

*Lisa Simpson from ''The Simpsons'', depending on the writer. Lisa has dipped into Mary Sue-dom the same way as Brian from Family Guy (both serving time as smug mouthpieces for their show's creators on hot-button-topics). There was also a time where Lisa had the tendency to never be punished for the times she does do the wrong doing (she ruins Homer's BBQ in "Lisa the Vegetarian" and merely got scolded by him where Bart would likely have been strangled for it). One episode had people deferring to Lisa over Prof. Stephen Hawking in Hawking's area of expertise, and Groening once said Lisa is his favorite character and that he would do anything to prevent her from looking bad (to reference the strangling; the show's animators also applied a double-standard as they strongly protested against the idea of Homer strangling Lisa for upsetting him like he does with Bart). While Lisa's popularity in-universe fluctuates, at its worst the whole town bends over backwards for her even when it goes past characterization (eg; Springfieldians can be '''VERY''' sore losers, as demonstrated in the episode "Boys of Bummer" where the whole town - sans Marge - ridiculed Bart for losing a sports game [[Grimdark|to the point that they nearly drove the 10 year old to suicide]], but when Lisa lost a spelling contest she was applauded for winning second place and got a Mount Rushmore-style sculpture of her face). That being said, there are episodes where Lisa is depicted as unpopular at school, her activism is made over-the-top to be played for laughs, she's neglected at home and less of a "smartest person around" and more of a "only sane person surrounded by idiots", lessening the Sue-factor.

*Magneto is not inherently one, but he does have the INSANE potential to become this when crappy writers start taking his sympathetic traits too far ("Hey guys, let's [[What|make Magneto a member of the X-Men and have him date Rogue]]!") or just forget he's the bad guy. Hell, he sometimes becomes this even when he's a horribly despicable villain. Jeph Loeb's raping of the Ultimate Universe known as "Ultimatum" has him use his magnetic powers to nearly destroy the world just by waving his hands at Earth's magnetic poles (completely breaking the laws of physics in the process) and then effortlessly take on half the X-Men and almost all of the Ultimates singlehandedly and nearly win.

*Master Chief from the ''[[Halo]]'' series is definitely one. For one, he has [[Matt Ward|Ward-grade]] [[Heresy|plot armor]]. Seriously, it was repeated throughout the games that he was born with the word [[What|'''LUCK''']]. To further expand on his Sueness, this 7-foot tall hunk of raging Leprechaun saved the entire Galaxy ''Twice!'', single-handedly stopped the Human-Covie War at the last minute, escaped and defeated an entire race of "Super-Space-Zombie-Fungus" that could mindfuck Culture-tier Civilizations without [[What|having his own brain being raped]], is one of the last surviving SPARTAN II's, solo an entire legion of Covenant Honor-Guards (Which are equivalent to Spacemarine Captain in rank but with inferior gear and training) as well as successfully assassinating a very important Covie leader protected by said Guards without being captured, survived escaping an Exterminatus-level explosion that destroyed a Super-Weapon 'Ring' by ''out-flying it'', somehow his armor is strong enough to deflect Fuel-Rod shots (Which are essentially Plasma Cannons), destroy a flying and mentally psychotic lightbulb with an overcharged Lascannon as a Self-Defence weapon (To be fair 343 Guilty Spark ''is'' a Forerunner Janitor Robot), and did I mention he saved the entire Galaxy ''twice''? Furthermore with the release of Halo 4, MC is now magically gifted the genes and DNA by the Librarian to become full on [[RAGE|''impervious to a fucking Forerunner Super-Weapon/Death-Beam'']], which allows him to single-handedly fight through the insides of a very important Forerunner Capital Ship filled with Necron/Warp-Spiders kill bots and somehow through the act of plot, [[Derp|defeat ''the'' highest ranked Forerunner Military General that has the power to solo the entire Galactic Empire from Star Wars.]] I mean [[Rage|WTF!]] did the developers of Halo not realize that they just created a character with plot-armor so powerful that they make the likes of [[Kaldor Draigo]] look decent in comparison? Thankfully however, as pants-on-head retarded as some of the feats listed for MC are, he at least has some faults such as being psychologically raped in childhood, doesn't have the "Morally Superior to thou" personality and has a very grim view of the war, almost got killed by the killer space popcorn, being rather mediocre for a SPARTAN II when compared to his other colleagues, is only good in leadership and even then made some stupid mistakes, gets pretty beaten the fuck up by a Brute, his Superhuman abilities only stopped when fighting against low-ranked Elites and know he will lose against one if he fought one-by-one, and most of the battles he has been through had almost cost him his life. Those faults listed are what makes good old Chiefy ''NOT'' in the top 10 most powerful Mary-Sues and makes him somewhat tolerable albeit boring compared to the other listed.

*Moka Akashiya from Rosario + Vampire: Stupidly fucking OP enough to one-shot kick '''EVERY OTHER FUCKING MONSTER''' IN THE '''ENTIRE FUCKING SERIES''' AND '''BOTH''' SEASONS, has a ''special exception'' to her power levels made so she gets 'first ancestor' vampire blood to enable her to be ''even more powerful'', has no character development ''at all'' (both her personalities), is a student at an academy and one-shot kicks two members ''of the fucking faculty'' '''AND TOTALLY GETS AWAY WITH IT''', and is ''unbearably arrogant'', revelling in her power and basically saying everyone else is beneath her. Not even other OP fucking vampires OLDER THAN HER can beat her. The only reason she's this bad? The author admits he LOVES vampires. So she's not only an Author Avatar, but a Canon Sue as well, existing only for [[Heresy|heretical deviants]] to fap to and the author to [[Slaanesh|schlick]] to. God-Emperor fucking damn it, Akihisa Ikeda. You little shit. What's worse is that [[Matt Ward|he has no shame about it]]. [[C.S.Goto| No, really]]. Even those who initially get one over on her before getting kicked are '''MORE''' OP ''fucking vampires''. Not really, she's easily one-uped by non-vampires with many characters introduced in S1 & especially S2 who rather easily take her down. Compared to the big leagues, she's a promising new recruit but not comparable to them.

*Mordenkainen (Gary Gygax's personal avatar in the Greyhawk setting and a level 30 wizard who never fucking ages past 50 despite being a hundred fucking years old without turning into a lich, he became bald for some reason, which makes him look evil, but he remains Stupid Neutral).

*Olympia Vale, another character from the [[Halo]] Series and seems to be all around taking over the mantle of Mary Sue from Master Chief as he is pushed in the sidelines like an old man being pushed in the old folks home. Whilst Locke has been accused for being a rather bland and forgettable copycat cutout of the original MC, he still pales in comparison to that of Vale. Essentially imagine Vale as MC but remove the sociopathic and borderline mentally damaged aspects of John 117, make her a prodigy even beyond that of Spartan recruits which in turn made her pretty easy to integrate in the SPARTAN IV program and make her instantly learn the language of the Elites whilst by herself in space with the only excuse being that [[Bullshit|'she was bored'.]] Vale and to an extent, the majority of the SPARTAN IV's seem to be an ongoing campaign from Karen Traviss (AKA the Destroyer of Fluff and Halo's Matt Ward) [[Derp|to further demonize Halsey and her SPARTAN II program]] for no better reason other than being forced to be [[Fail|unethical in an organization as ethically sound as the]] [[Inquisition|Imperial Inquisition.]] As you can imagine, this has already spurred some [[Skub|ire bitching]] in the Halo community and only time will tell if newer sequels from the game would flash her character out in a more decent or obscene matter.

*Ozymandias, AKA, Adrian Alexander Veidt from ''Watchmen''. He was born into a wealthy family, then threw it all away and earned even more money. He's a perfect athlete, good-looking, smartest man in the world (He mind fucked Dr. Manhattan, a blueish godlike superhuman) and a vegetarian. In the book he is able to successfully genetically engineer some sort of monster that would be teleported to New York and as it dies unleash a psychic shockwave that would kill millions in a "common enemy" plot to avert World War 3 by uniting them against "interdimensional aliens" (he does the same in the movie, but instead of aliens, he tricks people into making Dr Manhattan their common enemy - Dr Manhattan himself goes along with the plan once he finds out so there will be world peace). The only downside he had is loneliness, since he had betrayed all his friends and killed the only companion in his life, a fucking genetically-engineered female lynx named Bubastis, by having her bait Dr. Manhattan to the incinerator and killed them both with a switch. Still, Ozymandias is perfect because Mary Sue don't need friends. It was also portrayed that his "common enemy" scheme to stop World War 3 (which involved killing millions) in a positive or at least sympathetic light. He also caught a bullet fired from a gun with his bare hands, and the bullet didn't just go through them, like it would in real-life, despite him not having superpowers. Interesting to note that he the idol he worships: Alexander of Macedonia, is a man born before Christ, and the name Ozymandias is reference to a freaking [[Necron|Egyptian pharaoh: Ramses II]], proving that Adrian is just as egoistic as [[Dante]] and the [[Ultramarines]] by have the name of an ancient ruler as his own nickname. Hell, his color page on "before the watchman" made him looked like some sort of floating Jesus!! Thankfully, he has the decency to acknowledge what he did was wrong in the comics while also justifying it as being for the greater good...which it was in that it stopped World War 3, and he is more complex and well rounded as a character than several others.
** There's also the deliberately ambiguous implication that Ozymandias could get some comeuppance in the future (author Alan Moore stated that what happened after the end of the graphic novel is for each reader to decide for themselves); this is done with Dr Manhattan's cryptic response to Ozymandias' question whether things would work out, and Rorschach giving his journal - containing evidence implicating Ozymandias and revealing his plan - to a news outlet.
** A direct sequel to Watchmen called "Doomsday Clock" came and finally made Ozymandias pay for what he has done. After the news outlet ousted Veidt's plans, it started a chain of reaction that eventually led to his downfall as well as the supposed end of humanity. European Union dissolved, the USSR went back its old warmonger ways with their relation between the US degrading to lows below even the Cold War, nuclear weapons failed to be disarmed and one such missile was fired from Russia to New York City. Adrian is now the most wanted man in the world and has brain cancer (possibly ironically validating what he framed Dr. Manhattan for). Still, he managed to fight his way out of this chaos with other DC heroes (superman and the godamned batman mind you, characters with thick plot armor), the Comedian (brought back by Manhattan), pretty much everyone around the world but especially Dr. Manhattan (who masterminded this all from his glass palace on Mars). Also, keep in mind this sequel is not written by Alan Moore himself so it's at best considered an alternate continuity.

*Prometheus (the DC supervillain) certainly didn't ''start'' as this but ended up being twisted into one. When first introduced he was a genuinely cool and intimidating supervillain whose insane skill and manipulations were balanced out by his crippling mental issues (which the heroes exploited to take him down). Unfortunately, writers who weren't as skilled as Grant Morrison got their paws on him and made him ludicrously overpowered to the point where he single-handedly ''destroyed Star City, killing Roy Harper's daughter in the process''. Thus Prometheus went from an awesome member of Batman's rogue gallery to a complete waste of pages. Thankfully he was prevented from becoming any worse thanks to Green Arrow putting an arrow through the bastard's skull.

*Ramsay Bolton (show version): Oh good fucking God, where to start with this particular Villain Sue? Well, for one, he manages to take on twenty of the best Ironborn warriors, who were all heavily armed and armored, while not just unarmored but SHIRTLESS and armed with nothing but a kitchen knife and a mace, and SOMEHOW kicks their asses. Then, much later, he is shown to completely annihilate the battle-hardened Stormlander army led by Stannis Baratheon, the greatest military commander in Westeros, with nothing but cavalry, while the previous episodes had established that Ramsay is a tactically inept moron. (This can also tie in with the fact that the writers of the show seriously fucked over Stannis from "stern-but-honorable competent tactical genius" into "greedy, fanatical moron"). Finally, he is constantly shown to get his way no matter how stupidly contrived it seems to the viewer, arguably the worst case being marrying and deflowering Sansa Stark by raping her and getting the killing blow on fan-favorite giant Wun-Wun. His Sueness ends with his face getting caved in by Jon and fed to his own hounds by Sansa.

*Rey AKA Ma-Rey Sue from the [[Star Wars]]. From the release of the first movie, she already caught some backlash among the old guards of Star Wars who consider her a self-insert Mary Sue with a feminist agenda. Leaving aside the politics, the resulting trilogy and related events have only confirmed Rey’s Mary Sue-dom. Reasons from the first movie alone include Rey showing [[What|a better knowledge of the Millennium Falcon’s inner working than then Han Solo and Chewbacca]] who’d maintained the ship for decades where she had it for less than a week, being offered a job by Han shortly after meeting him despite him and Chewie being sufficient crew for the Falcon and Han being a cynic who barely knows her (like something right out "A Trekkie's Tale"), Rey suddenly being a [[Wat|powerful Force user who can resist a trained Force-user's mind probe]] despite no previous mention of her being Force sensitive and [[Bullshit|Rey performing said Jedi mind trick while in captivity almost immediately after learning she's Force Sensitive]] despite the fact that performing said trick is known to be difficult to master (to be fair, Rey had just been in telepathic contact with somebody who knew how to pull off a Mind Trick, and wasn't as good at telepathic interrogation as he thought he was). Rey’s only character flaw is recklessness, and while it does get her captured by the villains in the first and third films, this is offset by Rey getting rescued unharmed both times by luck/plot armour, which is a Sue-ish trait (at least Luke suffered actual setbacks and injuries – such as a severed hand and failing to save Han from Boba Fett). Furthering Rey’s status of Mary Sue is the “creators relationship to the character” part, with several of the filmmakers either pulling new explanations out of their asses to explain Rey’s abilities (or retconning them, such as the Force “cheat-coding” and the “Force Dyad”) or attacking anyone who didn’t like the character by tarring them with the same negative brushes ([[SJW|accusations of sexism got lots of usage]]). The third film threw in the big twist that Rey is ''really'' Rey '''Palpatine'''. You heard right, Rey is literally Emperor Palpatine's ''granddaughter'', almost as if they're trying to one-up Luke’s relation to Vader. The third film also ends with Rey taking the last name “Skywalker” while Luke and Leia’s force ghosts look on approvingly. For a more comprehensive coverage on why Rey is a Mary Sue, look up the results of the Mary Sue Litmus test on the discussion page.
** While it could be argued that Luke and Anakin are just as ridiculous, they fit easier the form of tropes they are. Luke, being the most classic [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheHero Hero] ever, is quickly established as good at most things he does, culminating in flying an X-Wing through the Death Star trench and making an one-in-a-million shot to destroy the Death Star, and this is less than a week before he was just a backwater farmboy. Though while Luke used the Force untrained like Rey did, his only feats were enhancing skills he already had and developed; a stretch, but more plausible than pulling new skills ''that require training to use'' out of nowhere. Anakin is the [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheChosenOne Chosen One], and people who are chosen tend to be skilled and powerful regardless because the Powers-That-Be have their backs on top of any personal skills they have. Young Ani competes and wins a pod-race that only aliens can normally participate in due to the sheer insanity of it, and then blows up a Trade Federation Dreadnought with a fighter he'd never been in before (even then kid Anakin also had R2-D2's help). Again, no problem. Now Rey is about as much the Hero as Luke but is an Unchosen One compared to Anakin, and the wildest thing she does in her first movie is to use the Force untrained (much like Luke does in A New Hope) and gain the upper hand on a Sith apprentice. Why people doesn't expect her to be [[-4 Str|as powerful]] as [[Lawful Good|Luke]] and [[BBEG|Anakin]] is better left for another discussion entirely, though the fact that Rey is touted as a strong female character while being propped up by the failures of men and saved by men throughout the trilogy doesn't help her case.

*Richard, from the Sword of Truth series (he's not as bad in the TV series). He is always considered an ideal hero despite being cruel, sociopathic, and thinking that the universe should bend over backwards for him [[What|(which it actually does).]] Everyone who disagrees with him is evil (even if that's the only reason they're considered a villain) or turns evil. Gratuitous rape is thrown in by the author as a cheap way to make him look better (making villains as reprehensible as possible doesn't solve the problem of the protagonist being completely un-heroic).

*Richard B. Riddick, from the Riddick universe. Vin Diesel's personal self-insert inspired from his own D&D Rogue. Didn't start out as a Mary Sue though, going from a sensible power level ''(where a fist-fight with a morphine-addicted merc is reasonably fair)'' with dubious morality and a lovably snarky badass attitude. Later becoming ''(particularly amongst the directors cuts)'' a superpowered badass who can single-handedly take on squads of soldiers with a knife, resist soul sucking, commune with animals and make threats with [[Just as Planned]] modes of killing. ''("kill you with my teacup" / "dead in 5 seconds")'', oh... he can also explode as shown in the director's cuts and off-screen in the video games. His later portrayals also show his morality becoming a "told you so" mentality, where, when people die it's really because they are the assholes and nothing to do with Riddick.

*Roran, from the Inheritance Cycle. He started as a farmer-apprentice blacksmith, yet he managed to become an invincible warrior, charismatic presence, expert orator and master strategist without any training. We are talking of a young man who soloes 194 soldiers in a melee battle and wins without taking any major injuries. He then survived a public flogging severe enough to be an alternative to execution despite it being not long after that battle. He also beat an urgal in a wrestling match despite the Urgal being stronger, bigger, better trained and having horns. In the third book he even single-handedly defeated a Ra'zac; a race that are to humans what wolves are to sheep. Then in the final battle Roran bested the magically-enhanced warrior who killed the elf-queen, and did so without magic or special weapons of his own. Yes, Roran managed to achieve feats that even elves would consider impossible. While his cousin Eragon has the (weak) excuses of magical enhancement and helping from his dragon companion, Roran doesn't. He is a common man who, for plot reasons, creates a plot armor just by thinking about his girlfriend.

* Sarah Kerrigan from the Starcraft series has become this more and more as time passes. In the first game she's just a terran ghost (psionic assassin) who gets turned into a human-zerg hybrid and disappears from the plot after like two or three missions in the zerg campaign, but then she becomes one of the main villains of the expansion pack and everyone else in in the game becomes a thundering dumbass so she can look like a master manipulator despite being played for a sap by yet another character, and commits several atrocities to serve herself and her own agenda but is not punished them in any way despite multiple characters swearing revenge on her. Then the sequel ramped it up. Out of fucking nowhere she is designated the saviour of the galaxy from the new villain in town with virtually no justification offered except that Blizzard were too cowardly and attached to the the character to follow through on people wanting her dead. She gets purified of zerg corruption and another character who's more fun and interesting gets killed off so she can live. The zerg campaign centers on her and shows her doing yet more pointlessly-cruel and destructive things in the name of petty revenge, its only concessions to the ridiculousness of letting her live being some half-hearted acknowledgements of her past crimes. And after a pair of pointless guest appearances in the protoss campaign and its prologue campaign, she gets picked by the last good Xel'Naga in the universe to receive his essence and become a Xel'Naga herself so she can defeat the main villain in a laser beam-off. And after her boyfriend, a better-written character who spends all his time getting shit on throughout the series, is seen moping in a bar at the end of the final campaign, she gets to ass pullingly make him a Xel'Naga too, for some moron's idea of resolving their relationship with happily ever after ending.

*Sakamoto from 'Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto' never fails at anything and always manages to look [[Awesome]] no matter what he is doing or how much the other characters try to sabotage him, and it is hilarious.

*Selene, from the 'Underworld' movies. Throughout the series, she bears several similarities to [[Alice]]; both are experts with weapons, both have superior biology to their respective species (humans for Alice, Vampires for Selene), both kill their way through swarms of enemies without getting a scratch, both have little regard for their source material, and both are played by the wives of the directors of their respective film series.

*Squirrel Girl from Marvel Comics is another one of these Sues who's actually popular and enjoyed for it, probably because she's played entirely for laughs: Doreen Grey is a [[Mutant]] teenage girl with Spider-Man levels of strength/speed/agility, can grow bone knuckles, can talk to squirrels (and have them do her bidding) and has the ability to defeat any villain she wants off-screen. This includes big-name villains like Doctor Doom (she beat him in his first appearance and several times afterwards, and this is a rare instance of a Doom-related incident that was ''not'' smoothed over with the "Just a Doombot" excuse), Ego the Living Planet (who is, like his name suggests, a planet, meaning that a teenage girl beat up a planet), Thanos (who is one of the biggest badasses of the Marvel Universe, but the writers saved his face by replacing him in this instance with a perfect copy of him), Deadpool (whom she calls the mean, mean man; he's actually scared of her), M.O.D.O.K. and tons of other people. She was once part of a C-list superhero team, but quit because she thought she was holding them back (which she was entirely correct about: she once apologized to them for being late because she had to beat a 100' space dragon) and left for Marvel's Nexus of the Multiverse: New York. Despite her unapologetic Mary Sue-ness the fans love her and see her as the one spot of light in the otherwise relentlessly [[grimdark]] Marvel Universe, because again, she's played entirely for laughs and there's nary a title in Marvel Comics that couldn't do with more laughs.

*[[Superman]] in the hands of a poor writer. He is morally perfect, one of the strongest beings in the DC universe, and his one weakness that's supposed to kill him never works <s>ex: he lifts an entire continent of Kryptonite after being stabbed by a dagger made of it</s> thankfully ''Superman Returns'' had so many plotholes that ''Man of Steel'' declared it all non-canon. The only reliable way to nerf him is to have Batman beside him, because Superman always becomes a dumbass when Batman is around (go watch DCAU Justice League to see for yourself). Good writers can avoid falling into this by having him go up against villains who can genuinely threaten him (such as General Zod or Maxima), showing that even with all his vast powers there are things Superman just can't do (in one tragic story it turned out that even though he can benchpress planets, he can't stop his parents from dying of cancer) or emphasising that his strong morals are not intrinsic to him, but a product of a happy childhood, caring parents and a network of close friends, and he wouldn't necessarily have them if he were raised somewhere less pleasant (like, say, Planet Apokolips or the Soviet Union - both actually happened in Elseworlds stories, look it up).

*Tauriel, Peter Jackson's special snowflake from ''The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug'' (a Mary Sue in something related to Tolkien; [[Tolkien|Beren and Luthien are deep and well-written enough to get a pass]], this is a sad day). Not content with pissing on the established characters and story from the book (i.e. the Barrel-escape from Thranduil's castle is changed, Smaug <s>is much less intelligent than he is in the book...)</s>-Sorry but this is A:not true, B:has nothing to do with Tauriel whom he never meets), Peter also adds unnecessary and over-the-top new characters. Tauriel's ridiculously skilled at fighting (even for an elf) and has healing powers. According to all of Tolkien's books, only a select few elves can heal people such as Lord Elrond Half-Elven, wielder of one of the three Elven Rings of Power and a direct descendant of the Kings of the Noldor; all things which Tauriel lacks. In addition, she's ship-teased with canon-characters Legolas (who never appears, or even gets mentioned, in the book) and Kili. Though it is worth mentioning Legolas was never supposed to appear in the film adaptation of the Hobbit but was shoe horned in by executives who wanted to cash in on his popularity with fangirls. At least some of the ship tease between Kili and Tauriel is well handled as well, in particular when Kili teases her and then tells her stories when locked in prison. Hell, next to the Uber competent Warrior Legolas became in the films, Tauriel is tame.

*[[Star Trek|Wesley Crusher]]. Wesley FUCKING Crusher. Originating from the same franchise as the original Mary Sue, Wesley is a very young ensign training to be an officer in Starfleet, where he's earned the admiration of many of the bridge officers. He became something of a protege to Captain Picard, who was impressed by Wesley after he showed that he had learned all the controls at the captain's chair when they first met. <s>While not morally perfect or incorruptible Wesley is as close as he can be in most cases</s> He's only moral by Gene Roddenberry's standards ''(which were messed up beyond belief, the man thought it was okay to be a prima donna director to a point that made even Stanley Kubrick and James Cameron look tame but not for children to grieve over dead loved ones, and that's not getting into his corporate shyster practices, anti-religious prejudices and sexism; seriously we're not making any of that up)'', by a normal person's, he's smug and egocentric, along with his [[Deus Ex Machina]] techno skills, which are shown off by making the rest of the crew look useless. He notably also gets the Enterprise into danger before getting it out of it, and never gets called out for it. Many people thought that he was an insufferable little shit, among them Wil Wheaton (the actor who PLAYED the guy). Wesley is even named after Gene Roddenberry; Wesley is Gene's middle name - or to give Gene's full name, Eugene ''Wesley'' Roddenberry.

*[[Loli|Young main characters]] in crappy [[Asians|Japanese]] [[anime|animes]] and [[manga]].

*Main characters from Japanese [[Isekai]] light novels. Usually they were nerds or losers who only interest in a particular underrated hobby/talent in their world, but became a fucking skyrim tier powerhouse once they enter the so-called mysterious otherworld. Upon entering, they became super powerful since their somewhat boring talent suddenly becomes a miracle to the other world residents thus making the main character successful. It is a trend that they will done the following to prove their superiority: wrecking Saturday cartoon villain tier antagonist (usually a reference to the main character's childhood bully) that made even [[Ahriman]] looks good, instantly gained many female party members because the main character was an unpopular virgin in their original world (and no males allowed, they are yucky), using their otaku knowledge to solve every problem that was deems unsolvable in the other world (more reason that their useless hobby/talent that was deemed useless has more use in the otherworld). The other world usually consist the cliches of JRPG world: [[Medieval Stasis]], fantasy creatures like dwarves and elves, old European like hierarchy and cultures, monsters, JRPG mechanic. One of many trend of isekai protagonist is that almost all of them have tragic background featuring how they were bullied in high school or parent suicide or some typical Japanese cliches of tragic (such as truck-kun). There are also many situations where authors would made the protagonist suffer by have him stuck in a misunderstood situation, setup by the unlikable villain as an attempt to make him look good. Then again, these kind of self fulfilling characters are authors self insert whom was a victim of a depressing citizens of their society, or they thought. There are a few exceptions to this such as Ainz Ooal Gown, Kazuma Satou or Kazuya Souma who are thrown into situations that requires far more intelligence, planning and Indy Polys than your typical light novel protagonist can muster. Some try to subvert this with mixed results. ''Re:Zero'' is a deconstructive take where its protagonist (Subaru Natsuki) dies painfully over and over and ''over'' again, and eventually confesses to everyone around him that he's completely useless. (Though then he starts learning from his mistakes and becomes more competent-- but '''not''' an uber-badass.)

*Judging from the rest of the list, [[Skub|any character you don't like.]]

===Works with more than too many of them===
*[[In Nomine]]'s Superiors may or may not qualify; if they do, they do so as a block, thus placing them here. The problem here is that each Superior is an NPC made to more or less '''be''' their entire organization (''most'' PCs report directly to at least one of them), and thus needs to be larger-than-life. Ultra high-powered NPCs plus Strong Personalities plus Needing to Show Up Frequently is a formula only in need of a small amount Bad Writing or Poor GMing to go into hardcore Suedom. On the "possibly further from Suedom" side, all the Superiors have exploitable character flaws, but the result is still an edifying example of why High Powered NPCs are a problem.

*Sonichu, made by [[Chris-Chan|you-know-who]]. To make a long article short, just about anyone who is friends with the author or from some franchise <s>s/he/it</s> they like gets to be overwhelmingly hax and unbound by the laws of morality, everyone who isn't is pretty much either nonexistent or very very evil (the latter guaranteed for any character representing someone the author has a personal beef with).

*Twilight
**[[Twilight|Bella Swan]]: Though she is a pretentious, manipulative, male-dependent, self-pitying downer who takes her parents for granted and makes no time for her friends, Bella is adored by all. Her first day of school is supposedly hard for her, despite the fact that every person she meets instantly presents her with a best friend badge, and/or falls in love with her. She's also clumsy EXCEPT when there's a moment where she'll die if she does something clumsy. Add being a painfully obvious author surrogate and even being the product of one of the author's dreams (S Meyer admitted that herself), "clumsy" Bella is the Mary Sue of her generation.
**[[Twilight|Edward Cullen]]: This character is the reason the popularity of vampires took a massive hit when the book came out. Possibly the most rage-inspiring aspect is he introduced the idea that vampires [[FAIL|SPARKLE HARMLESSLY LIKE DIAMONDS IN SUNLIGHT]]! He can read minds, is near impossible to kill, doesn't have the vampire weakness to holy objects despite seeing himself as an abomination against God, doesn't feed off humans despite his literal bloodlust except for criminals or "those who deserve to die", always fashionable and multi-talented. Despite being a textbook case of an emotionally abusive and controlling boyfriend to Bella, he's always treated as having the moral high ground... except when he refuses to make Bella a vampire, but that gets swept under the rug as soon as he changes his mind.
**[[Twilight|Jacob Black]]: A werewolf from the Twilight franchise. He commits date rape on Bella (forcing a kiss), trolls the vampires and switches sides between the werewolves and the vampires without consequence. The worst part is when he [[FATAL|falls in love with Bella's and Edward's newborn daughter because of a vision, practicing wife husbandry on her as soon as she can walk and talk... and all the other characters are fine with this]]. The story also gushes about his looks to the point that the movie doesn't go five minutes without the character taking off his shirt and the camera focusing on his muscles.

*Warhammer unfortunately has several examples, many of them a result of Matt Ward's bad writing. They get much better in the hands of more skilled writers, or in [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|parodies]].
**[[Cato Sicarius]]. Seriously this guy is Mary Sue's Mary Sue. He was born to a noble house on Talassar, trained with a sword as soon as he could hold one, inducted into the Ultramarines. He got commendation after commendation going from sergeant to company champion to Captain of the 2nd Company in several decades. He refined lightning assaults to near perfection and knows what to do after giving the battlefields a quick glance. He leads a company of mini Sues, each squad having some title for some great feat; their devastators having destroyed a titan, and a tactical squad that hasn't taken a casualty in close to 100 years. He is not only captain of the 2nd but "Master of the Watch", "Knight Champion of Macragge", "Grand Duke of Talassar", and "High Suzerain of Ultramar", seriously those last two titles are [[pretend|completely made up]]. He's a complete dick, valuing glory for himself and his company over all else, admitting to his men that he didn't care about planet Damnos when they were battling the Necrons over it (where he got his ass handed to him by a no-name Necron Lord). He also decided to appoint himself judge, jury, and executioner, to judge Uriel Ventris when he broke from the Codex, even though they're the same rank and only the Chapter Master has the right to do stuff like that. Oh yeah that reminds me, to top it all off most of the chapter thinks he's next in line to be Chapter Master, instead of Captain Agemman of the first company, even though he's got much (see fuck-tons) more experience than Sicarius. Add all that to the Mary Sue-ness of being a Space Marine and being in the Ultramarines and it reaches critical levels.
**[[Eldrad|Eldrad Ulthran]], and what's worse: he knows he is, and is a complete dick about it. Though he was recently imprisoned by his Craftworld for trying to help the Imperium and messing up Ynnead's ascension. He then joins the Ynnari after being shunned by his Craftworld.
**[[Kaldor Draigo]]. Wrote his mentor's name into Mortarion's heart without contracting Spess Aids, or being fucking destroyed by said primarch which, of those 19 (21?) can roll through a squad of Custodes without too much effort, got schllupped into the Warp and somehow remains pure.
**[[Marneus Calgar]], especially post-Ward. Killing an Avatar of Khaine by punching its chest in and not getting seriously hurt in said fight with one. An Avatar of Khaine is supposed to be as hard to kill as a Bloodthirster, something that takes a Primarch or a Bio-titan to beat in a one-on-one fight (then again, Games Workshop loves [[Worf|worfing]] Avatars, and Space Marines are their Creator's Pet). Calgar had his limbs chopped off by the Swarmlord, which didn't kill him due to Plot Armor, and he leads the Ultramarines, themselves considered a Mary Sue chapter in a Mary Sue faction (see the Space Marine entry on this page). These are just the first few examples.
**[[Captain Matthias Ward]], I am the better Mary-Sue.
**The [[Primarch]]s <s>and their [[Warhammer High|daughters]].</s>{{BLAM|'''THOSE WORDS ARE BLASPHEMY!!!!!!!! /tg/ can only create perfection!'''}} (To be fair, the daughters are only Sues in that they inherited their Sue traits from their fathers.)
**[[Uriel Ventris]] - despite initially coming off as a subversion of Wardian Ultramarines-are-the-best Mary Sue bullshit, he quickly devolves into [[Skub|Ultramarines are the worst unless they use the Codex to wipe their asses and act like Space Wolves]] - which is pretty much limited to - guess who? - McNeill's OC-Do-Not-Steal Special Snowflake Ventris.
** [[Iskandar Khayon]] a pretty awesome villain, but some of the stuff he does is just unbelievable, though some of that may be because his book is actually him telling the events to his enemies while captured so he may be lying about a lot of it.

*World of Warcraft:
**Kalecgos (AKA Kalec), blue dragon who can disguise himself as a human-elf hybrid; from [[World of Warcraft|World of Warcrabs]]. Ham-fistedly inserted into the Blood Elves' redemption story arc as an enabler. Later he takes over the blue dragonflight even though he's not the oldest, wisest or most powerful blue dragon, but simply because he was the only surviving named blue dragon with anything approaching a personality. Later he hooks up with Jaina Proudmoore, a powerful human mage/noblewoman/faction leader introduced in Warcraft III. She does this in spite of their vast age difference (which made her reject an Elven prince who loved her) and bad track record with lovers. Though Kalecgos later disbanded them as an organization, he's still the go-to blue dragon (despite older, more powerful ones like Azuregos and Senegos still being in the lore).
**Jarod Shadowsong, a Night Elf commander shoehorned into the setting in books "War of the Ancients" and "Wolfheart", by Richard Knaak. Brother to canon character Maiev Shadowsong, love interest to Shandris Feathermoon, - Tyrande's adopted daughter with both characters canon since WC3 (Shandris in case you don't recognise is that one Elf archer with a unique model present in the first two and last Night Elf missions in RoC) and the Night Elves greatest war hero after Furion and Tyrande themselves. His mere presence raises morale so much that people "automatically fight harder and obey him with greater swiftness". He survived a one-on-one fight against Archimonde, a demon lord who can destroy cities single-handedly because he suddenly decided to toy with Jarod even though time was of the essence. Sid war saw various Night Elves and even DEMIGODS place themselves under Jarod's command! He also lacks any personality beyond humble hero and has no character flaws that effect him negatively. He spends thousands of years after the first fight against the Burning Legion resting on his laurels and doesn't show up when the Burning Legion invade the second time, but no-one calls him out on this in-universe. Also Shandris' love for him? She hadn't seen, heard of or spoken to Jarod for ''thousands of years''; plus he was also ''married to someone else'' and Shandris knew it, but apparently Shandris still craved Jarod so much she propositioned him ''at his wife's funeral''.
**Krasus (AKA Korialstraz) a high-ranking red dragon, mainly due to the author's overuse of him, and said author is also Richard Knaak. He disguises himself as an elf, and said elf is one of the leaders of the Kirin Tor. On top of this, he's Consort/Adviser of the Dragon Queen, he might as well be the Dragon King considering how much importance Alexstraza puts on him and how few decisions she makes until after he's gone. He also gets sent back in time to partake of a historical event despite the fact HIS YOUNGER SELF WAS AROUND IN THAT TIME. He also set up another Mary Sue in Warcraft, Rhonin (NOTE; both characters were created by the same author).
**Rhonin, human archmage of the Kirin Tor. By Richard Knaak again, Blizzard Entertainment's equivalent of [[Robin Cruddace|Robin Cruddace]]. Knaak made up a new member of the famous Windrunner family just for Rhonin to hook up with. They have half-elf kids who are blessed by dragons despite the fact they've done nothing to earn it (the player characters have done more, but they don't get anything like that; just a few trinkets that will be rendered obsolete by the next expansion), not to mention that those half-elf kids are one of the very rare examples of human-elf hybrids in WoW (the other is Arator the Redeemer, son of legendary characters all the way back in Warcraft 2 - human paladin Turalyon and elven general Alleria). Even the name Rhonin is just the title "Rōnin" (referring to a Samurai with no master during Japan's feudal period) with a few changes to anglicize the name (and, of course, the character doesn't even look Japanese). He gets sent back in time to partake in the first fight against the Burning Legion for no other reason than Knaak wanted Rhonin to be there. He does practically nothing in the game, yet everyone says he's a great hero; even then, he didn't do half the things they praise him for.
**Sylvanas Windrunner from [[World of Warcraft]] (The trend is now a bullet train into Edgytown): Started out as a Fantasy counterpart for Sarah Kerrigan, she's been turning into Fantasy Hitler/Mengele (or rather, was from the beginning). Originally a High Elf ranger in Warcraft III who is killed and turned into a Banshee by Arthas. She sets up the Undercity as a fortress/Horde-run concentration camp for Alliance captives, and has free reign of atrocities ranging from slavery to genocide. Her Royal Apothecary kidnapped innocents to experiment upon under her watch, torturing them for fun and science. Now that doing bad things upsetting some players does definitely not qualify for Mary Sue'dom, but the problem becomes obvious as the plot advances. She was already under suspicion before the Wrathgate Incident (she knew about the plague, but not that it would be used on the Horde too), invaded Gilneas, nuked Southshore, waged a torture-filled genocidal campaign on the Humans, manipulated the Horde (to join them in the first place in order to use them as tools), built a Cult of Personality around herself, employed the Val'kyr (which seems to be a case of "Even Chaos has standards" when seen by pragmatic Death Knight Thassarian), resurrected those who she killed against their will despite not liking when it happened to her, shot and killed Liam Greymane then taunted his father Genn about it, attempted to steal the Scythe of Elune to enslave the Worgen to expand her personal army and made some kind of deal with the devil to get the Val'kyr in the first place. The closest she got to any kind of punishment was Lor'thermar threatening to kill her if she raised the Horde's dead as Forsaken, stating he'd leave her to the Alliance if she tried it on their dead and calling her out on several of her actions in Mists of Pandaria - rather weaksauce given the almighty kicking they were giving Garrosh throughout that expansion pack, making him out to be evil incarnate. In Legion, after retreating from the Broken Shore, the crowning moment of Mary Suedom occurs when she ends up being named the next Warchief of the Horde with Vol'jin's dying words, followed by her abandoning the fight against a world-destroying demon army so she can find a way to cheat death, and everyone in the Horde is okay with this. In the next expansion, the Horde forced the Night Elves out of Kalimdor in the War of Thorns, with Sylvanas pulling an Arthas by forcing the dying commander to watch her burn Teldrassil, an action worse than Garrosh's Bombing of Theramore because Theramore was a military target while the Night Elves had surrendered and Teldrassil was inhabited only by non-combatants. Then the writers give her plot armor by having "never forsake honor" Saurfang save her life by dealing a dishonorable blow to her opponent, as Sylvanas' atrocities grow barely anyone from the Horde turns against her, and pulling new powers out of their asses for her. Then she pulls an admittedly cunning trap and Blight-bombs Lorderaen when the Alliance take it from the Forsaken in retaliation (only turning the tide thanks to Jaina). After this she gets more unexplained new powers that allow her to one-shot Saurfang and solo Lich King Bolvar and a horde of undead in the lead-up to the new expac. The Mary Sue reason on top of all this? She never suffers any ''(literally, ANY)'' setback except Greymane ruining her Val'kyr agenda. All her atrocities and horrors are ignored or turned into heroism, and what's worse, she automatically pulls out the next phase of her agenda out of her ass like some Pentagon's high command after snorting a line of coke each. Her Forsaken, despite horrendous losses and ban on raising unwilling dead, somehow destroys each and everything with a shred of goodness around her...only for her to get raised to Warchief status like some spoiled prepubescent princess. This issue is compounded by the fact that Sylvanas has a very vocal fanbase and she's the Creator's Pet of at least two of Warcraft's dev team, lead quest writer David Kosak and Creative Director Alex Afrasiabi (the latter who insists [[Skub|she's not evil and that there's still a lot more to her story]]). Even then, David and Alex were proven wrong as the end of Battle for Azeroth and the upcoming Shadowlands expansion confirm/FINALLY ADMIT that Sylvanas is a villain and she's going to be taken down.
**Thrall, the (in)famous Orc Warchief from ''[[Warcraft]]''. Started out cool in WC3 as an Orc orphan raised in a human internment camp who escaped with help from a friend, he led the Orcs because he was the former Warchief's son and a powerful but not story-breaking shaman. By having his forces fight alongside the trolls and Tauren and save them from their enemies he made allies. Though he fucked up by sending Grommash to collect resources from Ashenvale (antagonizing the Night Elves, giving the demons an opportunity to corrupt the Orcs and leading to the death of a demigod who would've been a great help against the Burning Legion), with a lot of help from some allies and another demi-god he sets things right and they kick the Burning Legion's demonic asses off of Azeroth. He still holds the line against threats and tries to make peace, but he's a bit too forgiving of trouble-makers in the Horde (see Sylvanas above and Garrosh below). In the Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcramps, he became Azeroth's premiere shaman and leader of half the world while appointing the <s>[[Skub|VERY CONTROVERSIAL]]</s> <s>balls to the wall violent and universally hated</s> patriotic warmonger Garrosh Hellscream as Warchief of the Horde; despite the protests of several others ''including Garrosh himself'' (who was uncertain he could handle the responsibility of such a role at the time). Takes over as Aspect of Earth from a borderline demigod, and even deals a crippling blow to him when he's empowered by the Old Gods. Even people that were fans of Thrall during Warcraft III have started to get sick of him.
*** The writers appear to have realized what kind of monster they unleashed in Cataclysm and every expansion since has given him a kicking in some way. In Mists of Pandaria Garrosh kicks his ass just before his final fight with the players. In Warlords of Draenor he gets relegated to the sidelines and has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHwiEbXqh3k another fight with Garrosh], which features a memetastic sequence in which Garrosh pummels his dumb ass while listing his failures. He wins the fight only by cheating and using his shaman powers, and Legion (the expansion) reveals the Elemental Spirits have nerfed him for his blatant haxxing. Even when he begins getting his powers back, you only see that happen if you're a shaman, and he ends up becoming your bitch. Even his big fancy Doomhammer gets misplaced so it can become an Artifact weapon for Enhancement shamans.

==Mary Sue Races==
While not every member of a race is a Mary Sue, [[Chakat|with one or two exceptions]], sometimes whole races are considered Mary Sues because they have huge amounts of plot armor and are idealized beyond reason. They were put here as the Mary Sue list was originally conceived for characters. Also, please list them in alphabetical order.

* Although some might find this as [[Skub|arguable,]] the characteristics describing the Asari race in [[Bioware|Mass Effect]] are blatantly Mary-Sue. Although not every Asari is a Mary Sue (though some are), when it comes to the general race as a whole, oh boy does their 'Sueness' reach Chakat levels. Examples on what makes them a Mary Sue includes having the second longest lifespan behind the Krogan (over 1000 years, plus they lack the Krogans violent nature which can easily waste their long lifespans), all of them are biotic users, every one in the game is intelligent, founders of the council, considered sexy by many other species despite being a monogendered species (even Salarians, who lack a sex drive and mate by necessity), and are deliberately oversexualised by the developers so they can be [[Rule 34|Rule 34'ed to death]]. Their race as a whole is portrayed as peace loving hippies, the best diplomats, the most respected species in the galaxy as well as having a serious case of "Holier/Morally Superior then thou" attitude. Their ship the "Destiny Ascension" is the largest and most powerful ship in the Citadel fleet and their ships perversely resemble a lady privates because you know they all look like "wominz". Thessia, their homeworld, is regarded as the "jewel" of the galaxy (instead of the fucking Citadel) as well as having the largest amount of Eezo which partially explains how their entire race is biotics. Any asari can 'Read' most people's minds and inner-thoughts with near complete-accuracy, though only if that person agrees to it (they can literally mindfuck you). Furthermore with their way of reproduction, since they are monogendered (Meaning their all female) a lot of newcomers in Mass Effect start to scratch their heads on how they manage to get each other pregnant without any physical evidence of having a dick (Although one of the hypothesis is that they might actually screw around with the local fauna AKA Bestiality). However the fluff states this as Parthenogenesis, for those that don't know what it is, think of them as chickens....which is actually hilarious if you seriously put the comparison in context. Another odd thing about their reproduction is that somehow the Asari have the capability of getting pregnant from just about '''''Anyone'''''. [[Chakat|Do those traits sound fucking familiar to you?]] So all in all, not only are they a holy (unholy?) fusion of a smurf, elf and a monster girl, but they also commit in sweaty Lesbian/Bestiality/Xenoality orgies with almost everyone, turning the Asari race into nothing more then a giant Whorehouse for Aliens and Humans to fap in a hundred dozen ways and yet they are still ''okay'' with that....<s>Slaneesh approve of this!</s> {{BLAM|'''''BLAM! BLAM! DOUBLE HERESY!'''''}} But to be fair, at least Asari aren't [[Avatar|furries]] or physical [[Chakat|hermaphrodites]].
** Amusingly enough, the third game reveals that the only reason Asari are so much more advanced than the other races is because the Protheans (the super-advanced precursor race) were deliberately manipulating them and sneaking tech to them in their ancient history in order to give them a boost (such as genetically engineering them to be a race of skilled biotics and [[STC|leaving instruction manuals on how to create all sorts of advanced technology and deal with the other races in their "beacons"]]). The hope was that if they were given enough a headstart, the Asari would be able to unite and lead the other races to victory against the Reapers (in other words, they were deliberately ''trying'' to make the Asari Mary Sues in order to give the next cycle an advantage over the Reapers). Instead the Asari kept that knowledge to themselves and used it to become the most powerful race in the galaxy. When the Reapers showed up, the Asari buried their heads in the sand like the smurf elf pussies they are on their homeworld, leaving the other races to fend for themselves, than promptly got their asses kicked by the Reapers (Which they probably deserved it for being such [[Eldar|self-righteous and selfish cockbags]]). Perhaps one of the few instances of a Mary Sue being both invoked and subverted.

*[[Angry Marines]]. When was the last time YOU heard of an Angry Marine LOSING? Thought no-{{BLAM}}
{{BLAM|+The current author has been executed by the Inquisition to prevent the total destruction of the Imperium of Man by Angry Marines. Thank you and have a nice day.+}}

* The Draka, once human, then Posthuman slaver empire from the Domination Series by S.M Stirling, collapsing the "Bullying, slaving, torture-happy, heartless Karma Houdini asshole who is the channelized catharsis of the author rather than genuine art." shtick into a black hole the size of the galaxy. South African British colony turns into a nation of literal "[[Drow]] in human skin" when due to (mis)fortune, every losing side from wars against tyranny gets exiled to Drakia, the British colony named after Francis Drake. Turning chattel slavery into a race-wide, airtight regulated franchise in the case of blacks, they exploit entire Africa by taking the colonies belonging to the enemies of British people. Unifying in a Spartan way of life, completely shedding any morality in the case of slave control, eventually Draka Dominion declares independence from the British Crown, and turns entire Africa into a mega plantation with industrial giants enticed by obscene handouts exploited from Africa. The Draka then adopt Nietzschean ideals, and declare every non-Draka a slave, or a potential slave. Somehow the First World War results in Ottoman Empire being overran by them, and eventually the Draka start turning white people into slaves starting from Italy with approval of Hitler and employ black slave soldiers who are given ample living standards and items with free rape of anyone that is captured.
** This (Post-World War 2) is where the story turns from an [[Edgy]] /pol/-fanfic to pants-on-head retarded FAPfic. Though the series display a very detailed alternate history AND technological evolution (steamer cars phased out far later than combustion engine driven ones), the Draka's endless S&M laden plantation slave bitch fantasy hits overdrive and they simultaneously conquer Russia, Europe minus , and entire CHINA with black soldiers and their white masters that were, mind you, from an Africa that wasn't overpopulated but ecologically protected. They do not lose one, ONE battle while rampaging and raping and enslaving. Their methods are extremely savage: impalement and rape are regular actions at every resistance, and the black soldiers can take out any psychosis forming from mass atrocities on other slaves back home, every capture tortured until completely broken before being enslaved. Their research facilities have *zero* ethics, using up millions of humans in torturous experiments to develop fantastic drugs, bioweapons and medications since, well, their citizens are drilled from age 2 to 18 with a Nietzsche-on-crack ideology to circumvent a sudden case of conscience to heart. Eventually they change the Draka Citizen DNA to that of an immortal superhuman species, destroy the rest of non-Draka armies with [[/pol/|weaponized AIDS]] and make all slaves into docile abhumans and take over the rest of the world, rape all the women and men, destroy every monument and cultural heritage not belonging to them, turn the USA into a hunting reserve to hunt humans like animals (and eat them sometimes). Then the Draka expand into alternate universes, infiltrating our world and its parallel versions and start taking them over as well and enjoying immortal, eternal exploitation of everyone everywhere forever. What the entire US and UK plus the rest of Asia, Japan, Southeast Asia does is to create an Alliance that walks on eggshells and fucks up every espionage action against the Draka, loses every battle and ends up escaping to Alpha Centauri. S.M Stirling eventually writes a sequel where an alternate Earth has the [[Humanity's_Last_Stand|human Alliance win for a a change]], but the damage is already done. We are graced with the endless plantation BDSM fetish fantasy of bisexual, blonde, white, transhuman, constantly horny blue-eyed men and women fucking their farm slaves of either gender and make them work their asses off after breaking them in of every little inch of their personalities. A particularly nasty lesbian Draka is Stirling's Creator Pet: she manages to capture the sister of an American soldier who killed her lover and makes her a slave. She tortures her with a mental chip for years to destroy her brain, forcing her to bear her lover's clone children, and rapes her mentally, and eventually, physically. And her side wins the war, the girl escapes an old ruined wreck into space(albeit back to her brother), and our bitch spends her long, long life to torture and kill surviving Alliance holdouts for fun, happily raping, killing and torturing ever after. Seriously, even Kosak had more of a shred of decency, Stirling.

* The [[Drow]] from [[Drowtales]]. Their Mary Sue factor isn't even funny. Shaped by several inputs from several authors, their Drow are the best example of how too many cooks ruin a soup as well as the main author's high school misantrophy hitting overdrive. The Drowtales' Drow are practically immortal, have regenerating limbs, never menstruate, possess metals that are impenetrable to other sentient beings and virtually twice as big and a thousand times as powerful as other races to the point of a few drow kids on an adventure can butcher a city with innocents to save their friend who was about to be killed for its blood, since humans, hunted and enslaved, are desperate to the point of killing elves for their blood just to have an edge. Their houses in underworld have all the modern technology complete with giant walkers and submarines, modern machinery, PARTICLE RIFLES and magitech street lights, but somehow they need human and other races as slaves and this need is shown as just and necessary right at the beginning with the "good" faction's "surface raiders" murdering an entire village and taking women and children to slave markets because the poor widdle drow need slaves and "It's just their unique morality". And the way the webcomic shows them as tragic beings is the cherry on top: I didn't know it was so tragic and sad when the humans counterattack to save their raided relatives from your homes, locked in to be sold as slaves.

* ALL [[Chakat|Chakats!]] The entire fucking race are distilled and purified Mary Sues, sometimes warping stories they are even mentioned in passing. Not just [[monstergirls|feline-centaur]] [[/d/|dick-girls]](Sick Fucks), they're also each master psionicists with faster-than-light mind-reading, able to cure deep neurotic complexes with a good deep dickin', strongest and most stable form of 'Taurs', considered as the most "beautiful thing in the universe" despite looking exactly like lions with the fact that they have dicks, morally perfect to the extreme, nobody technically hates them, their breast milk can turn the most feeble human into mini-Arnold Schwarzeneggers and every non-Chakats seem to have a unnatural and unhealthy lifestyle on trying to "Do it" with them. Despite the fact that there are hundreds of ''other'' Catgirls outside of this furfag heresy, that are more attractive, cuter and prettier then them with the added benefit that they are actually female, [[HERESY|not hermaphrodite abominations]].

* [[Elf|Elves]] are often portrayed this way in fiction(Look above at Drowtales), though there are exceptions and it's becoming rarer for elves to be portrayed as Mary Sues. A lot of their sueness comes from how idealized they are. They're always beautiful, sometimes even without making an effort, either immortal or have very long lifespans and can only die from violence. They're often considered to have the moral high ground yet also be condescending to the younger races, but the elves contempt kept getting justified in some stories. Some have the natural ability to make anything beautiful from even the most base materials, naturally have great magical ability, and are often favored by their gods. However, there are evil elves in fiction and some elves who are morally good without being Mary Sues. Then there are curvy anime rapebait elves (often dark elves) who get high on male smells and secretions and turn into thicc fuckdolls taking massive amounts of dicking.

*[[Doctor Who|Whoverse Humanity]] takes this up to a 100 million in this case. Depending on the timeline, Humanity not only manage to become the dominant ruler of the multi-galaxy not once, but [[What|'''Five Fucking Times!''']] Without any indication on how they manage to conquer the Galaxy, thriving with hostile Aliens that could LOLStomp the Necrons, Eldar, Orks, Tau, Tyranid, Chaos in all it's forms and the Imperium ''combined''. Furthermore not only are they one of the [[Imperium of Man|most numerous species in the Universe,]] but also one of the most adaptable and longest lasting race, as seen when they are one of the [[Grimdark|few species still alive near the end of the fucking Universe.]] To give you an idea on how fucking ludicrous Humanity got within Doctor Who, in just 500 years from present day, Humanity was already a major force in the Galaxy ([[Star Trek|Compare this to most Sci-Fi timelines]] [[Bioware|where Humanity either just started to explore their surroundings]] [[Halo|or already establish a small and insignificant area]]), as well as having weapons that could make [[Strike Legion]] seem useless in comparison, and when you take note on how short the timeline distance is between the present day and the end of the Universe, it just makes you say to yourself....the Fuck? Compare this to say [[Star Wars]] in which they have the excuse of not knowing how long Humanity has been space traveling, or [[WH40K]] where the thousands of years gap of slow progress before the Warp Drive was invented seem much more plausible then this absurd scenario. You know Humanity is a Mary Sue when even the near-death of the Universe can't kill them off....until a certain Dues Ex Machina appeared. To be fair, they only gain their Sueness momentum when a certain Time Lord keep on foiling the plans of countless Aliens attempting to conquer and crush humanity in various stages in time; either that or because the Doctor has a unusually unhealthy Humanophile fetish. They are probably one of the few examples of a "Accidental Mary Sue", in which the Doctor, with his fancy Time gizmos and intellect, unintentionally guided Humanity to such power levels by either saving their asses from certain doom or altering the timeline so they won't fuck up, due to his love of Humans. Granted Whoverse Humanity is definitely far from morally perfect (A substantial amount of Whoverse villains are Humans and the multiple Human Empires itself are morally questionable at best. The Timelords themselves are hardly better than the Daleks at times.), the main point of contention is how influentially powerful they are for such a young race while at the same time, disregarding other more ancient and more powerful races (Silurian, Cybermen, Sontarian, Ice Warriors, etc) that should be the one having more galactic screen time and hegemony then them.
**Whoverse humanity Mary Sueness can't really be blamed on any one author. It's basically what happens when the newer writers don't want to change or retcon forty year old fluff.

* Dwarves as seen in the Artemis Fowl series. While virtually all dwarven exploits described are performed by one Mulch Diggums, most of his Mary Sueness is excused as "dwarven racial talents." His spit can harden into a glowing substance that's strong enough to resist high speed impacts, he can fart hurricanes and shit cannonballs, he can dig a self sealing tunnel through any earth-like substance as fast as a man can run, drink water with his pores, use said pores like suction cups if he's thirsty, hear better than a stethoscope, and has tremorsense to at least a hundred feet. Dwarves are also described as having access to the fairy magic (Common uses include instant healing, invisibility, and mid-grade mind control), but Mulch gave that up to steal things instead. This despite no readily apparent level adjustment, nor any mention of useful powers before those same powers are necessary, puts this race quite firmly in this category.

* LeShay are a race that appeared as a monster in the D&D 3th edition book [[Epic Level Handbook]] and have been completely forgotten about since then like most of what was in that book. They are described as being to elves what elves are to humans only more so. That sentence alone should immediately set off red flags. LeShay are extremely powerful immortals resembling albino elves who are survivors from a civilization that was erased from history. Whoever it was that came up with this race probably did not intend for them to be Mary Sues and the concept of them actually isn't that bad, but they probably would have ended up as Mary Sues if any bad writers had gotten a hold of them.

* The Mandalorians in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, depending whose writing them. While good under the correct writers, under some of the bad ones (Hint, it involves Karen fucking Traviss), they compete with badly written expanded universe Jedi and Sith for the position of Star Wars' Ultrasmurfs. In the expanded universe ALL mandos are elite warrior mercenaries, skilled enough to take out armed enemies with their bare hands and usually packing enough fire power to level a building. They're so badass in fact that they're known to hunt Jedi for fucking sport because they're the only thing that'll give'm a real challenge. Experienced jedi hunters can be good enough to fight them head on despite all their force powers and saber swinging because they have the right gear and experience to counter it. Bear in mind that Mandos do not use the force in anyway. Karen Traviss also writes them with the Mary Sue trait of always being right and people agreeing with them for things they call the Jedi out for that they didn't even do, like create the clone army, and makes them out to be the pinnacle of civilization despite being warmongers with a history of allying with the Sith and trying to conquer the galaxy themselves.
** The most famous Mandalorian, Boba Fett, generally avoids becoming this trope and is just a plain badass (as a bonus he rarely if ever engages in the dick-stroking egomania of Traviss's Mandies), but under bad writers his badassitude can push into this. His father Jango Fett follows this same idea; in fact his origin story partly involves his old merc group of Mandalorians getting slaughtered by a group of Jedi in a moment that reads sort of like "fuck you Karen Traviss". Sure, Jango kills six Jedi with his bare hands in that massacare, but the Jedi he killed were not decades old masters and he is (as an individual) supposed to be that good. The fact that he managed that made Palpatine choose him as the Clone Army template donor.

* [[Avatar|All Na'vi]], the blue-skinned eco-humping gobshites.

* Smurfs. They're portrayed as a peace-loving, quasi-communist society who always come out on top in their primary conflict with an evil wizard family and are idealized to the point of ridiculousness. They're also friends with animals and never have to worry about being eaten even though they're the size of large mice. [[Skub|Then ''again'']], most of the other conflicts they encounter are usually due to one or more of their clan fucking something up in accordance with their [[Derp|singular personality trait]], and overall they seem collectively naive about things to the point of gullibility. Said approach is likely designed to promote the usual aesop of teamwork and the importance of family, so it could be far worse.

* [[Twilight|Vampires in a certain book series]]. Even though they were as gay as fuck (which damaged the reputation of actual vampires).
** [[Vampire]]s in general started in falling in modern years due to their weaknesses being forgotten. They were often portrayed by writers as hard to kill monster that is able to use magic, good at many martial arts, good swordsman, master scholar, good charismatic looking in appearance, living in big castles while commanding other monsters like they were their servants or slaves, making them the Elves of the monster world by that definition. Initially in novels like Bram Stoker's Dracula, Vampires had notable weaknesses including regularly drinking the blood of many human victims to stay young and powerful, but later writers dropped this in favor of making Vampires straight up immortal. Seriously, some writers even give them plot armor to get past their weaknesses of holy objects, divine power or sunlight (though the former usually depends on the author's attitude towards religion).
** [[Tremere|Clan Tremere]] (a.k.a. "Tremary Sues") from the ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]'' [[RPG|ttRPG game]] are an entire clan of Mary Sues as they were [[Mark Rein·Hagen|the author]]'s pet mages from his previous ''[[Ars Magica]]'' game. Tremary Sues enjoy the narrative absurdity of holding a near-monopoly on vampiric thaumaturgy, despite the fact that older vampiric clans had millennia to perfect thaumaturgy before the first Tremere was ever born.
** Probably one of the best exceptions of this is Count Orlock from the classic silent film ''Nosferatu''. Whereas nowadays vampires get the treatment of being oh-so-sexy, suave, charismatic, pitiable creatures whose lives suck despite being immortal, undead bloodsuckers, Orlok is just a hideous predatory monster out to drink blood and feed. No charisma, no suave, nothing to pity, nothing to feel empathy for. In short, straight-ahead horror vampires done completely right.
** By contrast, the vampires of the House of Night series by mother and daughter team P. C. and Kristen Cast are far worse examples than even Twilight's bastardization. To clarify, vampires worship the goddess Nyx who is the only real goddess, are selected by a tracker when they are a human teen, are the poor, oppressed minorities of the world even though literally almost every famous person in human history was a vampire, will become utterly handsome and beautiful unless they reject the Change in which case they are afforded no sympathy as they die due to events outside their control, every negative stereotype is because of stupid humans, they can never due anything bad...in short, vampires done so badly that Twilight is more believable as good vampire literature. Seriously.

== Mary Suetopias ==

As mentioned in the main article, there are some cases of entire civilizations getting the "Mary Sue" label with some justice. Here are a few.

* The Draka, before they become a species, are usually held to be a fairly strong example of a Villian Suetopia. See above in Mary Sue Races for more.
* Anarchist habitats in [[Eclipse Phase]]. To quote TVTropes, they "are apparently flawless societies where robots and nanofabricators provide for everyone, crime is virtually non-existent due to surveillance sensors everywhere and well-armed populaces, and there's no shortage of spare bodies like there is in the Transitional Economies."
* Aldis, from [[Blue Rose]], has this accusation thrown at it, with some justification.
* The various civilizations of Ayn Rand's science fiction are either Mary Suetopias or Villain Suetopias. No inbetween.

* [[Ultramar]]. Need more be said?


There are some "special cases" (parodies, twists, and deconstructions), that are worth mentioning:

* Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is... odd. Go read it if you want more, because it's ''very'' short. 
* Rapture and Columbia from the Bioshock series are "functionalist" Suetopias: Because the games are about killing lots and lots of dudes, you need to have those dudes be crazy or assholes or both. Rapture could actually be interpreted as a criticism of Ayn Rand's Suetopias by showing how they will go wrong in a less ideal world.
* The original "Utopia" by Thomas More is interesting, in that it somewhat parodies the concept before it existed. To provide two examples, "Utopia" is a pun on ''eutopia''-"good place", and ''outopia''-"no place", and the frame story narrator's name translates as "Peddler of Nonsense". Yes, this means that the man who literally coined the term Utopia immediately considered it wishful fantasy.
* Mordent, from [[Ravenloft]], has a somewhat interesting twist. Its Darklord focuses more on Ghosts than on the living, so the living aren't the focus of the horror, and as such, for Ravenloft, it's a relative Utopia ''for the living''. Once you die there, however...
* Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" is widely interpreted as a parody of such works.
* The Federation of [[Star Trek]] seems like a Mary Suetopia on the surface. However because the show was initially focused on morality stories the "Insane Admiral" trope crops up every now and then, showing some leaks beneath the surface. In latter seasons of TNG and all Deep Space Nine those leaks become full blown cracks, with the Maquis and the consequences of the Dominion War. Captain Sisko even rants about this a few times during the show. Earth in Star Trek is practically a paradise compared to most other planets in the galaxy, and thus "It's easy to be a saint in paradise." With examples such as the Federation spy agency Section 31 engineering a virus to use on the Founders or Sisko himself collaborating with a former Cardassian spy/assassin to bring the Romulans into the war in order to defeat The Dominion via a ''massive'' fraud.

* Alpha Complex, from [[Paranoia]]. Need more be said?


== Somewhat Special Cases ==

There are a few cases of characters who could be referred to in-universe as a Sue, or serve as a non-joking deconstruction of the idea, or are referred to above sufficiently to be worth describing, but aren't actually Sues. (Characters who veer in and out of Suedom depending on the writer or episode go on the main list, BTW.)

* The Crimson King from Stephen King's Dark Tower series. He's talked up as a big threat, and his plan legitimately threatens the universe; but when confronted, he turns out be a paper tiger, whose chief power was getting so many people and monsters working on one page on his plan to destroy the world, and was otherwise actually rather mediocre compared to them. Given the heavy theme of '''disappointment''' in both the series as a whole and the last book of it in particular, this sorta worked on a meta level, but was very, well, disappointing. (For the reason he's included here, see Darkseid above.)
* Griffith, from [[Berserk]], seems a Mary Sue on the surface, leading the efforts to save Midland and defeat the Kushan invaders while everything goes his way and everyone praises him... but then you remember that he's also a member of the Godhand who's got reality-warping powers and uses them to manipulate everything and everyone around him to his advantage. Basically, Griffith hacked the game and then began playing on the lowest difficulty, while making it harder for everyone else. If anything, Griffith is all the common jokes people make about a Mary Sue deconstructed, showing how utterly awful and soulless such a person would actually be. On the other hand, one of his former Warband member, Rickert, saw through his bullshit and slapped him for it even though he was not there when Griffith betrayed his comrade. So not everyone is falling for Griffith.

* Jonathan, from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Superstar", provides a pretty good case study of the in-universe Mary Sue.

*Momonga/Ainz Ool Gown from Overlord boarders on Mary-Sueish and is the protagonist of an [[Isekai]] work, but is also a decent deconstruction of invincible Villain Sues at the same time. He is transported to a fantasy world as his [[Lich]] MMO avatar, along with his Guild Hall and all its NPCs, now alive. He's still a no-life (literally) Japanese salary man, but finds he has lost his humanity and feelings, all the better to pretend to be (and eventually become) the overlord his adoring minions expect. These expectations pressure him to conquer the world with his gamer skills, system knowledge and corporate experience, min-maxing his way to success whilst bullshitting people that he's an evil mastermind. He still has many advantages however in resources, magic and diplomacy (substituting sales pitches for evil monologues, surprisingly easy) compared to all other characters so far. This results in him single-handedly winning wars, having an Empire become a vassal state almost by accident, and annexing a whole town from a neighbouring kingdom to rule over (Word of god is that no other YGGDRASIL players will appear). Being by many definitions OP, drama arises from him not having complete control and knowledge of his minions' actions. Though fanatically loyal they are constantly guessing his true intentions to try and impress him, misinterpreting his commands, and in some cases almost outright deceiving him. Two such examples are Ainz's advisor Albedo plotting behind his back to kill other Supreme Beings that he wants alive and unharmed, and Demiurge harvesting human captives to make magical items (Ainz himself mistakenly thinks Demiurge is only using animals because Demiurge refers to humans as animals on account of his contempt for mortal races). Both are in part because of Ainz's actions, and in any case, he has ordered equally terrible things himself. :* While most of Ainz's female guardians lust after him, even this is deconstructed. Albedo's a succubus, so lust is par the course, and yandere for Ainz because he altered her code in YGGDRASIL to change her from " a slut" to "in love with Momongo" as a joke. Shalltear wants Ainz because he's a walking skeleton and she's a necrophile (and not to Ainz' taste being a loli vampire; yeah... even then she holds her absent YGGDRASIL creator in higher esteem than Ainz) and Aura keeps a lid on her crush (she's also a flat-chested teenage elf and wary of jealous reprisals from Albedo and Shalltear). Ultimately, the fact that Ainz is a walking skeleton means he's unable to fulfill their desires or consummate his own.
:*TL:DR: Ainz's skills as a salary man and a competitive gamer don't translate well to politics or world conquest. Without his own gamebreaking powers, his almost as powerful loyal NPCs, his skull poker face and incompetence from some of the enemy commanders, Ainz's plans wouldn't have worked nearly as well.

* The Monkey King, from [[Mythology|Journey To The West]], if one assumes he isn't a religious figure and thus safe to include in this list, is interesting in that while he's very close to being a Mary Sue, several factors drag him away from the classification:
*#He's charged with protecting an unworldly monk, along with a horse, an idiot, and a SUPER idiot. Rescuing them is most of what he does in the main body of the story.
*#He's repeatedly shown as being outwitted by the Buddha. While he's more clever than anybody else besides the Buddha, the implication is clear: there '''are''' people better than him.
*#Even if one cares to dip into a religious reading, one can see in his introduction the clear Buddhist message "No matter how awesome you are, you are still trapped in the machinations of Desire and Karma"; alternately, even if you don't care for religion, there's also the message "make enough of a nuisance of yourself, and your enemies will eventually slap you down even if it means _____" (in the case of the Monkey King, swallowing their pride and asking help from somebody they dislike). (In other words: A deconstruction of certain kinds of Mary Sues, before the idea of a "Mary Sue" was even created.)

* [[The Raven Queen]] is a fairly good example of why "Mary Sue" accusations, unless taken from a Author Centered or Functional perspective, are somewhat useless. TRQ hits many Mary Sue buttons, and thus is sometimes accused of being a Sue; ''HOWEVER,'':
** She's never the protagonist, and when she does appear, she's treated the same as any of the other deities in 4e. Accusations of Functional Suedom thus sort of fall flat.
** While she may hit some Authorial-Centered (or Doyalist) definitions of the term, it's probably more appropriate to compare her to just about any other non-monster female character in 4th Edition D&D in this context--while she is obviously designed to attract those who are attracted to a certain kind of woman, so are all the other non-monster females (to quote a famous demotivator, "RPG Artwork: Let's face it, a lot of it is porn. (Pretty odd porn, too.)").
** She is no longer an example at all due to her backstory being completely rewritten in 5th edition to make her fit in with the setting better. She is no longer even a god since her attempt to become one was sabotaged, turning her into a phantom with a craving for knowledge and memories.

* Saitama from One-Punch Man. A manga/anime/webcomic that satirizes comic book super heroes. As the title says he able to defeat just about any opponent with one punch (with a few exceptions that require two or, rarely, three). While stronger than most of the "S-Class heroes" (the highest rank in the Hero Association), at the start of the series Saitama's personal life pretty much sucked. He had to pinch pennies to eat and had no knowledge of the Hero Association until he was notified by others of it's existence. As most can easily guess his strength makes most fights unsatisfying for him. Even the arc villains who force him to use his Serious Series techniques will leave him bored. Since nobody knew who he was until recently. Credit for his work went to other people and the super hero name he was given by the association is "Caped Baldy".
** Just to be clear, the main reason why he's not actually a Sue has to do with the usual focus of the series: That Saitama gets no satisfaction from his lopsided victories, and the fact that the World's Strongest Man is something of a pathetic loser.

* Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty. When it comes to his (seemingly) limitless ability to invent crazy sci-fi tech and to get himself out of virtually every tough spot, not to mention with getting away with being a colossal jerk to everyone around him, Rick could qualify as an anti-Sue. But his character is far from perfect, and he often falls under a combination of archetype and deconstruction. As a person, he is an older man who’s had a tough break (divorce and the death of a close family member in some parallel universe), and the fact that he has all this tech and that he either can't solve his personal problems or prevent new ones from occurring. Though the fact that he can be funny, the handful of moments of his positive qualities and being a fictional character do contribute to his likability.
** Again, to be clear: Rick's antics would probably qualify him for the main list, but the show is very clear on a few points that move him here: First, Rick is an asshole, and not the type you want to be, either (it's almost directly stated that his assholery grows from some pretty grim experiences and knowledge); second, Rick is not somebody you want to be, nor be around; and third, the writers realize that he's both of the above.

* The main casts of [[Star Trek]] TOS and TNG (besides Wesley due to being Rodenberry's self insert, above)--in particular, James T. Kirk when not written by William Shatner-- provide a good reference line for Suedom. Although they are usually right by authorial fiat, there are several points that point the other way from Suedom:
*#They are also usually allowed to be wrong about an issue, at least initially (and rarely, but enough to be worth mentioning, all the way to the end of the story)
*#The fact that the focus is usually on the scenario presented, rather then the perfectness of the characters
*#They all have character flaws (even Kirk's "No Such Thing As A No Win Situation" attitude is presented as something that ''could'' get him and his crew killed one day)
*#They are not omni-compitent, even within their field--even Kirk has been outmaneuvered on occasion
*#Most importantly, the writing is usually of sufficient quality to not make their perfectness an issue (except, in Kirk's case, for works written by William Shatner)
*#Notably, as part of #2 and #5, there is no "right" solution to many of the situations beyond "survival"; the audience is usually allowed to draw its own conclusions about the morality of the situation, something usually lacking in the writing of the type of author who perpetrates a Sue.
** Combined, these points make them a good reference line for "hyper-competent" characters: Beyond here may lie Suedom

* At first glance, Tsukiko from [[Order of the Stick]] seems like a textbook Mary Sue, given the LONG list of Mary Sue boxes she ticks: Heterochromatic eyes, great beauty, skimpy clothing, unusually skilled for her young age, Japanese name meaning "moon child", oppressed by a stuck-up society not understanding her greatness etc. But in reality, Rich Burlew wrote her as a satirization and deconstruction of the Mary Sue archetype and the mindset that often creates such characters. The "misunderstanding" in question? They threw her in jail for '''literal''' corpsefucking. (Yes, she's a necrophiliac, and it's treated as being just as gross as it is IRL.) Great beauty? Nobody cares, and it doesn't make her a good person by default. Sees good in the bad guys that nobody else does? It's based on deliberately ridiculous logic that is completely wrong anyway. ([[What|The living are jerks, and the undead are the opposite of the living, ergo the undead must be good people]], she claims, the batshit insanity of which is called out for what it is. Also, she thinks that Xykon is some kind of Edward Cullen type-guy, as opposed to the Chaotic Evil Lich Sorcerer he ''actually is''.) A bad guy becomes a complete dumbass to accommodate her genius? Nope, Redcloak only let her have her way so his own, far more subtle machinations could avoid having attention drawn to them, and when she forces his hand he gladly demonstrates to her that she was completely outclassed by him the whole time. And to really drive home how wrong about herself she was, when she dies nobody on Team Evil gives a damn except the Monster in the Darkness, which only seems to have happened because he/she/whatever is the resident softie of the team. Also, Redcloak let her die at the hands of her own wights, [[Slaanesh|simultaneously her surrogate children, minions and lovers]], after controlling them, removing her ring that made her immune to level drain and giving her a "You suck!" speech about how undead are not people, just complex weapons, her thinking otherwise doesn't make it so and if she ever thought he was powerless before her, she was dead wrong, for a delicious dose of karma.
** TL;DR version: Tsukiko is a parody of a Sue, who is shown to be objectively deluded about everything.


[[Category:Mary Sue]]

Mary Sue

2020-09-20T17:43:47Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:B0FF:62CA:C5D1:828A: /* How Can I Tell If My Character Is A Mary Sue? */

[[Category:Mary Sue]]
{{Plot Armour}}
{{HurfDurf}}

[[Image:Marysuetest.jpg|500px|thumb|right|The perfectly sound and entirely reasonable logic of [[Internet Troll|many well-respected and completely honest critics]].]]

Overall, a '''Mary Sue''' is a character that is shamelessly self-inserted, fawned over by the canon characters, poorly developed, without flaws, and/or stupidly overpowered, who the story focuses on at the expense of the actual regular main characters. [[/tg/]] hates [[:Category:Mary Sue|Mary Sues]].

Unfortunately, after so much [[rage]] and so many [[troll]] threads, /tg/'s definition of Mary Sue has become blurred to the point that any character at all can be (and probably has been) accused of being a Mary Sue on even the flimsiest of pretenses.

Some accept nothing less than the above description, and will sooner gut you then look twice if you say it's anything else. Others prefer a more generalized definition, which refers to an overly-idealized character who exerts an unjust amount of influence upon their respective setting or story. Others still carry this meaning out to extremes and use the term to describe anyone who isn't a homeless junkie or a brooding sociopath with an alignment of Chaotic Batshit Insane. While another definition put forward by YouTuber Literature Devil in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcXVGIi1m28 this video] is that A Mary Sue is a character for which the laws of the universe bend to justify the actions of the Mary Sue. Especially when the universe bending over backwards leads to contradictions which will rightly piss most people off.

However, there is a conundrum regarding the definition. If the character is overpowered, idealized and part of an established story (such as some portrayals of Wolverine and Batman), some say that this is not a Mary Sue, as they are a canon character in an original story. For them, the term "Canon Sue" is used. The only difference between a Mary Sue and a Canon Sue (I'd like to take the time to apologize to any real-life people named "Sue" who are reading this) is a Canon Sue is an established character in the story/wish-fulfillment for the creator of the story (NOTE: few people will admit if the fictional character they create is for wish-fulfillment). For the sake of this page, the definition of Mary Sue will also include Canon Sues.

Another problem is when people use the term "Mary Sue" to refer to a "creator's pet"; a character that part of the fanbase dislikes but is adored by the creator of the character and gets treatment such as increasing focus, magnifying the importance of their role, and having the other characters talk about how awesome they are in painful ignorance — or sometimes in spite — of the fans' obvious hatred. This is not a Mary Sue though a character can be both; the two types share common traits and a Creator's Pet is more easily defined. For example; [[Marneus Calgar]] is a creator's pet, while one character who is a Mary Sues and a creator's pet is Wesley Crusher from Star Trek.

It is worth noting, however, that very rarely, authors have the skill to pull off the Mary Sue, creating a character of such epic awesomeness (e.g. [[Star Trek|Jean Luc Picard]]) that no one gives a shit.

Before you ask: Male versions of Mary Sue (and there are plenty) are known as Gary Stu or Marty Stu (both work, with usage depending on whether you prefer it to share initials or to rhyme), although for the purposes of sanity, we'll default to "Mary Sue" when referring to them.

==So, what's this "Mary Sue" thing got to do with /tg/?==

In short: [[NPC|GMPCs]], [[Elminster]]-types, [[Matt Ward]]-types, and [[Elf]]aboos.

# GMPCs have their own section in our [[NPC]] article, so we'll direct you there.
# Settings have a tendency to grow Sue-level characters if they have a sufficient number of high-powered NPCs. This is because an author needs ''somebody'' to impose some stability to the setting, and so you usually wind up needing a character that has many traits of the Mary Sue. And from there, it only takes a few writing mistakes to go into Mary Sue territory head first. ([[Elminster]] is a notable example here, but plenty of others exist.)
# Certain authors (and any setting with many authors will probably eventually find themselves with at least one of these) want to include Perfect Heroes or Perfect Villains in their settings. The problem with Perfect Heroes is that they tend to be just one or two steps from Mary Suedom, and these authors are usually bad enough writers that the resulting "Hero" goes veering off into Suedom like a plane that loses both wings goes veering off into the ground. (Matt Ward is merely the most /tg/ notable example here; more and worse examples exist, ''trust us''.)
#* A somewhat common subspecies of 3 is the "[[Waifu]]" Sue author. He wants to create his perfect Waifu, and the result is usually among the Suiest Sues Who Ever Sued. (Husbando-perpetrating female authors exist, as do gay and lesbian authors who do it for the appropriate sex, but Waifuing male authors are the most common subset to get called out, for various subtly obvious reasons.)
# When imagining a species or race, some authors lose sight of the concepts of competitive balance and competitive advantage and make one race superior to all the others, forgetting that the rule in good storytelling is [[Sanderson's laws|that flaws and limitations are more interesting than powers]]. <ref>For example, any given Superman (the character, not the book) story is not that interesting unless you either introduce an equal (or more powerful) and opposite threat (such as General Zod or Darkseid), or lean heavily on either his morality, secret identity, or kryptonite, all of which act as constraints on his power.</ref> The most common race to get this treatment are [[Elf]]s, but [[Chakat|other examples exist]].
#*Humanity gets both ends of this frequently: Depending on the bad writer in question, we can either be [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|the best thing ever]], or utter shit compared to their perfect Mai Waifu Master Race.

(Points 2 and 3 overlap, but are distinct enough in cause that they're worth separating.)

==Origin of the Concept==
The name "Mary Sue" comes from a parody of shitty [[Star Trek]] fanfiction called [http://www.wiccananime.com/amslt/amslttrekkiestale ''A Trekkie's Tale''] (no, seriously, that's the origin, look it up if you don't believe me.) First written in [[Old School Roleplaying|1974]] by Paula Smith, the original Lieutenant Mary Sue was a parody of the half-Vulcan jailbait and other shameless self-inserts that had been clogging up the Star Trek fanfic magazines. The trolling was so epic that her name became permanently ingrained in the vocabulary of every fandom on the planet, and this makes Paula Smith a paragon of trolls.

The term is commonly used by [[troll]]s, and can most easily be spotted by a blanket accusation of a character being a Sue without attempting to justify actual reasons behind it. More clever trolls will attempt to offer some explanation that is deliberately intended to get under the offended party's skin.

==A Few Special Cases of Sues==
Here are a few complicating factors in any simple definition of what "Mary Sue" means, because critics are mean like that:

===Male Sues===
First and foremost: A Mary Sue, as stated above, does not need to be a female, woman, or girl. There are plenty of male Sues, usually called "Gary Stu" or "Marty Stu". (See also the "Hard Man Making Hard Decisions (While Hard)" well below.)

===Villain Sues===
Note that the Mary Sue need not be the hero of the piece. A large minority of Sues are villains (either protagonist or antagonist).

Some well-known characters with a tendency in the hands of bad writers to become Villain Sues include [[Batman | The Joker]], Magneto, Doctor Doom, and [[Star Wars | Admiral Thrawn]]. And then there's the flat-out Villain Sues in a single writer's (or at least well regulated and coordinated between several) canon, such as Red Hulk's initial appearances, or the show version of Ramsay Bolton. Or, to be more directly /tg/ relevant, [[Fabius Bile]] and [[World of Darkness | Samuel Haight]]. [[Chaos]], especially with how it's been portrayed in the last several years, often gets called a faction of Villain Sues.

===Sue Species And Orders===
Further, it's possible for the Sueness to be spread across an entire species or other group of people. The accusation is more commonly (and more properly) thrown around on the species side of that line (Internalized Fantastic Racism be a Real World thing, yo). The best-known cases of species-wide-Suedom are probably [[Chakats]] and any given [[Elf]]aboos' version of Elves. The best known case of a Sue Organization or Order are the [[Ultramarines|Ultrasmurfs]].

===The AntiSue and Sympathy Sue===
You'd think that the opposite of a Mary Sue wouldn't be a kind of Mary Sue all its own? Well, you'd be wrong. Comes in two flavors:

* The perpetrator of the Sue might think "I'll just pull a George Costanza, and do the opposite of my instincts!", not recognizing that what made their instincts bad was more in amplitude than in direction. There are two subflavors of this:
** Characters who are Just The Worst in some way (ugly/stupid/unpopular/what-have-you), but is still recognizably a Sue (see, for reference, the worse Neelix episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, or Bella Swan from [[Twilight]])
** There's also the "Butt Monkey" type, where the character is essentially just a Mary Sue in full reverse; there's the same "the plot entirely revolves around the main character" problem, the same "that makes no sense" and "things that only happened because the Author said so" plots, the same "there must be mind control involved" character reactions, just set to negative instead of positive. This version's inclusion in Suedom is rather more controversial, as so much is mirrored that it's hard to differentiate the "real Sues" from just "the author's chew toy". The result is still bad writing; it's just that there is some debate about whether it counts as "Mary Sue Bad Writing" or just "Bad Writing".<ref>To repeat the message of this entire collection of Sue types: The definition of "Mary Sue" can be rather slippery, even when ignoring internet trolls.</ref>
* The perpetrator of the Sue is going for Sympathy. Which, again, is only a change in direction, not in amplitude.

The "Butt Monkey" case results in an extremely noticeable character archetype that is not usually called a Mary Sue, but is just as annoying: the one guy who is theoretically on the side of the heroes, but is useless, wrong about everything, an asshole, and generally disliked by the rest of the heroes, and who spends all of his or her time complaining or offering obviously stupid ideas. Remember Eric the Cavalier from the 1980s D&D cartoon? How about Nathan Ramsey from Seven Days? The Grand Vizier from War Planets? The magical ragdoll character "One" from the movie "9"? Avoid writing characters like this. Please.

===The Comedy Sue===
This is where a Character is a Sue and they are utterly perfect, but the audience is not supposed to be in awe of how good they are, we are supposed to laugh at the ridiculousness of it.

This kind of Sue can actually work; for examples, see the anime "Haven't You Heard I'm Sakamoto" and to a lesser extent "One Punch Man" or even Popeye at times for examples of this kind of Sue. They never fail, but we're suppose to laugh at them doing it.

The methods used for this humor range from deconstructive parodies (e.g. "We've needed a new house here at Hogwarts to accommodate all the...special girls, so welcome to House Sparklypoo!") to straight deconstruction (Take One Punch Man's Caped Baldy: instead of people fawning over him, nobody believes his feats and call him a fraud, while he's also constantly frustrated by the lack of a good challenge) to anti-climax (God-Man, pictured below in this article) to the whole thing being a mere joke delivery system (classic Bugs Bunny or Popeye cartoons).

'''''However''''', in order for this to work you need your tongue so far up your cheek it's basically bored out through the other sides, and you actually need ''''' talent. ''''' And the talent part applies even when the character exists solely for joke delivery (and thus requires no characterization beyond a couple of basic traits).

===Mary Suetopia===
For that extra bit of mind screw: There are cases of the "Mary Sue" accusation being thrown, with some justice, at entire ''civilizations''. [[TVTropes]] calls this particular variant "Mary Suetopia". Just about any Utopian work, and many a Dystopian work (*cough*Draka*cough*) can have this accusation thrown at them; commonly comes in three subspecies:

# Pure Preaching. Not just religious, but, in the story, any ideology that the author thinks knows The One True Path To (Happiness/Truth/God/Prosperity/etc.). Usually the most Sueish of the lot.
# Stories about or involving the Fall of such a civilization (sometimes incidentally; see, for example, many interpretations of [[Superman|Krypton]], where the only important part about the place is that it blew up after sending one last ship out to Earth), or about the conflict between two civilizations, one of whom is theoretically "better" than the other (e.g., some of the Culture books, or, on the flip side, [[Orks]] vs. just about anybody else). Can be Sueish, but can also avoid it, depending on the focus, nature, and quality of the work.
# Social Satire/Commentary. Here, the point of the work was less on how perfect this civilization is, and more on using it to comment on the culture in which it was written, or the state of the world at the time. Think 1984, Gulliver's Travels, Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, the original ''Utopia'', and so on. Can be the least Sueish of the three, depending on writing quality.

(As a side note, this version of Suedom is particularly /tg/ relevant; each version of Warhammer alone has vast amounts of the latter two (although admittedly in a usually fairly non-Sueish way), and there are too many cases of the first case in Science Fiction settings.)

==Watsonian vs. Doylist definition of "Sue"==

A futher complicating factor in any definition of "Mary Sue" is the Watsonian vs. Doylist definition problem.

For the unfamiliar, criticism sometimes differentiate between a "Watsonian", or "in-universe based" explanation of something (e.g., "Superpowerman got beaten by Evilvillianman because he had the flu!") and a "Doylist", or "author-centered" explanation (e.g., "Superpowerman got beaten by Evilvillianman because the rest of the story doesn't work if Superpowerman wins that fight.") "Watsonian" and "Doylist" are named for the fictional and real life authors of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Dr. John Watson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle respectively. Holmes fans being really creepily fond of coming up with Watsonian explanations for plot holes probably helps.

How does this relate to Mary Sue definitions? Well, the two common ways of describing a Sue are Watsonian, where being Overpowered and Always Right is the relevant problem, and the Doylist definition, where the relationship of the author to the character is the relevant problem. We employ a mixture of the two, because guessing what the author was thinking can get very unreliable very quickly and even when they're questioned about this authors - like any other people - can be blind to their biases or lie. Regardless, the purely power-and-rightness-based definition can easily start returning false results if context and sanity are not considered.

==How Can I Tell If My Character Is A Mary Sue?==
Each "Yes" answer gives your character a piece of Mary Sueness.
[[File:God-Man.gif|thumb|300px|right|God-Man, providing a particularly extreme example (albeit a parody)]]
* Does their personal morality always perfectly match objective reality? To put it another way, is there no difference between describing their opinion and simply narrating what was actually going on in a scene?
* Do they start the story at the pinnacle of achievement and have no way to grow or improve?
** Or do their new skills and abilities come from your ass at just the time they need them?
* Do they have unexplained frequent good luck, even when by all logic they should fail in that area?
* Is it a fan character that is better than the canon characters? (As in, "more powerful and gets all the attention", not "better written". If it's the latter, all the power to you.)
* Do they have physical features, powers or items that are impossible to have or extremely rare going by the rules of the setting (ie; a human with cat eyes and wings with no explanation in real-world based fiction, or a ridiculous item such as a weapon which is [[Noise Marines|chainsaw, electric-guitar and machine-gun combined]] in a swords-and-sorcery setting)?
* Do they have the most powerful ability or power in a setting, without any sacrifices? (For example, a character that can use magic which would destroy any enemy, without any negative effects. But if a character has that ability, and it reduces his lifespan, damages him forever and/or kills everyone including his comrades, it's not ''that'' overpowered.)
* Are they connected to the canon characters or do they become connected to them? This usually takes the form of being a "long-lost" relative or love interest to a canon character.
* Do they get a lot of shilling? For example; do all the canon characters suddenly start talking about a fan character, with their presence in the story largely relegated to providing opportunities for the new character to show how pure, powerful, good-hearted, etc they are? Or are they shown getting the better of a character more powerful than them with no in-universe explanation?
* Do you never allow other characters to dislike them?
** [[Eragon|Or do you punish those other characters for disliking your character by portraying them negatively and/or making something terrible happen to them]]? (For example; making the one character who dislikes the Mary Sue unlikable themselves, a villain or "coincidentally" lose their home)
* Are they someone's self-proclaimed [[furry|fursona]]? (If so, stop reading this list and burn them for [[heresy]]).
** The Sonichu exception: If the author is making fun of ''somebody else's'' fursona, and isn't a furry themselves, everything is perfectly fine, at least as far as Mary Suedom is concerned.
* Do they share any of the same beliefs as the work's creator and openly express them? (for example, the protagonists of stories by Ayn Rand, Seth MacFarlane or Jack Chick).
* Do they always make good decisions? And/or bad ones that are suddenly revealed to have been a good choice?
* Do you use absolutes like "always," "everybody," or "never" when describing their ''abilities''? (Those word being used to describe their ''behavior'' are usually okay, if slightly suspect (bad writers have an attraction to absolutes).)
* Do they feature an entirely contrived "weakness" that doesn't affect them any time it would harm them (such as being clumsy ''unless'' they are required to perform a great feat of athleticism) or isn't really a weakness (such as being too kind or righteous "for their own good") which was clearly added solely so the author could point to it when accused of writing a Sue?
* Is the main problem in the story one that this character can easily fix or solve on their own? (Doesn't count if they're the only character in the story).
* Do they have powers that no-one else has.
* Is it a protagonist character written by Matt Ward, Kim Dal Young, Stephenie Mayer, Karen Traviss, Onision, Ayn Rand or Terry <del>Good</del>Badkind? (Note, a Mary Sue can be written by someone who's none of these people.)

Since then, it's been realized that a character doesn't need to be a self-insert to be a Mary Sue, but it helps. Everyone has their own criteria for what makes one, but the big three traits are:
#They are super-powerful/hyper-competent. In established settings, usually more so than canon characters. Better leadership skills than a McDohl, faster than Sonic, etc.
#The story completely revolves around them, even in... no, ESPECIALLY in established settings.
#They can do no wrong. Everyone loves the Mary Sue and defends them even against perfectly reasonable concerns, invariably demonizing people that make these concerns.

Bonus points:
#The Mary Sue's competence doesn't match the creator's knowledge, leading to things like "The greatest Scorpion Clan shinobi EVAR" walking around in broad daylight in stereotypical ninja gear.
#The Mary Sue is a hypocritical monster and the creator is totally blind to this fact.
#Other characters comment on how much better at their own skills the Mary Sue is like they're happy for her, even if the character is known for being arrogant and standoff-ish.
#Characters that don't react well to the Sue's 'harmless pranks' see the light and begin to love the Mary Sue as well.
#Those that don't turn out to be evil spies or something.

A lot of traits (e.g. too-long-names and heterochrome eyes) are assumed to be signs of Mary Sues, but in themselves don't make a character one. This is because the "But I'm '''''Specul'''''" features are more a symptom than a cause, and all of them can be used in a non-Sueish manner (for example, a character with a twenty-part name is meant by the author to be taken as overly pretentious, and is reacted to in-universe as such).
 

=="I Hate This Competent Character"-Syndrome==
Believe it or not, of the vast majority of characters called Mary Sues or Gary Stues in fandoms, only a small handful will actually qualify as a true Mary Sue. Remember, one of the defining traits of Mary Sue is in their relation to the author; either the author sees them as herself/himself, or views them as fap or schlick material (or worse, [[waifu]] material). As a general rule: If the character makes a mistake, and it's clear that '''the author''' understands that the decision is a mistake, then they're probably not fully a Mary Sue.

The rest are what could be called "I Hate This Competent Character"-syndrome. This happens when a character, usually in the spotlight (so not the background character that has no bearing on the story), is widely disliked by a large part of a fandom, but with no tangible thing to latch that hate unto. What happens is that the character gets called a Mary Sue for being too competent, but this accusation has some issues of its own. One, as we've seen in this page, a true Mary Sue is a self-insert (and if the character is a super-naturally competent self-insert; yep that's most likely a Mary Sue), and a competent character need not be.

Second, in all the fiction we so love, like [[Setting Aesthetics|fantasy, sci-fi and all the rest]], main and side characters are ''ridiculously'' competent, sometimes as a byproduct of what kind of setting it is. That is why settings like [[A Song of Ice and Fire]] is notable for deconstructing competence, showing that a sword in hand does not a hero make - but that's a '' deconstruction.'' In most settings, heroes just are competent; the real sense of adversity and challenge usually comes from something else, like emotional struggles, political or societal issues and other faults. Even if there's a plotpoint about a hero being too weak to beat their enemy in one-to-one combat, chances are the main feature of that story arch is how the hero ''feels'' about it, rather than the struggle itself. Yeah sure, our hero learns the cool "I Win" technique, but that's not the important part; the important part is what kept them from learning it in the first place. Is it too dangerous? Did they damage themselves or friends with it once? Does it take them too close to the enemy they hate? And so on.

Let's take a classic, Superman. Superman is hyper-over-the-top-super competent, being so strong, resilient and fast that no one can stand up to him - but it works, because his challenges lies in how he utilizes that power, and how he relates to a mostly muggle world. So the character isn't a Mary Sue - but if you do not like Superman, maybe you wanna latch unto something to hate on... And that is likely this competence.

It's especially notable in settings where characters are automatically assumed to be competent if they are a main character. Examples like [[Star Wars]], [[Bioware|Mass Effect]], [[Dungeons and Dragons]] (depending on the whims of the GM), [[Lord of the Rings]] and other magical settings are filled with characters who are just competent by being a hero.

Good examples of "I Hate This Competent Character"-syndrome are characters like James Bond, [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Jon Snow]], [[Eldrad]], [[World of Warcraft|Thrall]], [[Batman]], and Rick Sanchez; all main-ish characters who are competent and may be dislikable for various different reasons... And if you dislike or even hate some of these characters? ''That's totally fucking fine.'' But make sure to actually use your ding dang words rather than hop on the bandwagon and use a term that doesn't mean what you think it does.

We all love and hate different characters, that's called taste. But competence, even relatively unexplained competence, is not a marker that indicates Mary Suedom.

===Bad Writer (Sub-)Syndrome===

A further note to the above: There are a non-trivial number of these type of characters who pass through the hands of a lot of writers; in this case, they can be Sues, '''but only when in the hands of unskilled writers'''. A bad writer will focus on the awesome, not on the structure and contrast that support it.

For example, hypercompetent characters like Batman or The Doctor are usually only interesting in scenarios that ''actually call for'' that hypercompetence. In that case, if the audience can see the solution a mile away, or can see an obviously better solution to the situation, the result is usually not as "awesome" as the author desires--unless the point is to demonstrate the flaws of the character, in which case, we're still moving away from "awesome", but ''intentionally'' this time.

If this is happening, just relax, and let the Dork Age pass, hoping that the next writer will actually be competent.

== Mary Sues in Roleplaying Games ==
It is important to realize that when playing an RPG, either as a player or as a DM, the standards for "unacceptable Mary Sue" change dramatically. Unlike if you are writing a novel, you are not the sole author of the story, nor are you the only main character. Thus certain traits that are completely fine for a character in a novel become things to avoid when making a character (NPC or PC) in an RPG. A good example of this would be Harry Potter. As the main character in a series of novels, making him the Chosen One is perfectly fine, because the story literally revolves around him, and the reader is meant to identify with him. If someone where to make Harry Potter in an RPG, it could easily become a problem, since him being "The Chosen One" by definition overshadows everyone else's characters. That is not to say that it should ''never'' be done, but it is something that should be discussed and agreed upon by the entire group beforehand. The reverse can also be true: what makes for a good RPG character does not always make for a good character in a novel (or, more accurately, ''unless well written'', certain traits common in RPG characters do not always make for a good character in a novel.) This is even more important when you are the DM; the players are the main characters, not the NPCs, and trying to pretend otherwise (usually via DMPCs) is one of the quickest ways to ruin a campaign.

For our purposes, we at 1d4chan try to keep our focus more on the tropes related to Suedom, and specific examples (usually Warhammer related). If you have a story of a specific Sue-abusing player or DM, there's probably a thread in [https://boards.4channel.org/tg/ the obvious place]. Go bore us there (where we can ignore you) instead of boring us here (where we'll need to revert you).

==Negating the Mary Sue==
Interestingly, there hasn't been really much written about how to defeat a May Sue aside from trolling, but we may identify a few ways to deal with Mary Sues and even Canon Sues:
*The first one, and quite accessible is character development, while this implies a risk of expanding the infection it is possible to remove a Sue status with a good writer either making fanfiction or a spin-off where the Mary Sue is changed for the better. Examples of this has been seen in long-existent characters which, due to good writing, become more down to earth, with the added bonus of annoying fans of the Sue period of time to no end. After all, one fanfic denies another.
*The second one is retcon, as the easiest way to annihilate a Mary Sue is to achieve the general consensus that it never happened. This is harder of course, as it requires the creators recognizing they made the wrong decisions or at least conceding to the fans. It can happen, but it can only be through official involvement, which requires a lot of fan reaction to happen.
*Third, have them operate in something resembling the real world; their impossible perfectness is treated as impossible by the people within the setting, and their actions have unforeseen consequences. (See, for reference, good quality [[Superman]] and [[Batman]] stories that don't focus on making either character more "human". Or the two protagonists from One-Punch Man, who are very much overpowered, but the focus of the series is a comedy based on ''how little satisfaction'' they find ''due to their overpoweredness''. The comic book Irredeemable is another good example, as the Plutonian comes across as a deconstruction of this character, showing how he uses his powers like an immature man-child and wipes out an entire country all because the entire world doesn't love him completely and adore him, demonstrating how much of a dick he is.)
*Finally, when it comes to reality, badly written characters end falling by their own weight. This is the reason no one remembers most of the overpowered characters added in fanfiction.net while everyone remembers cool, well-molded characters - after all, reality ensues.

Note that like overpoweredness, Mary Suedom is relative to the context of the work. Much like how if in a game everybody is overpowered, nobody actually is; if you are describing everyone in a setting as a Mary Sue, more than likely you're just in a "cast of snowflakes" setting, like superhero comics or transformers. Here, everyone of import is super amazing and special with a lot of weight put on their decisions and actions. (Exception: If one side of the conflict has a monopoly on both awesome and author-intended-sympathy, the "Sue" accusation starts becoming more relevant again.)

[[Troll|Or maybe you're just a dumbass flinging around buzzwords at things you don't like.]]

==Hard Men Making Hard Decisions (While Hard)==

A side note: A specific kind of male version of Mary Sue is also well known. He is usually described as a "Hard Man making Hard Decisions", but works using that description are usually sufficiently closer to "porn logic" than actual human logic that it's usually called "Wank material". (Note that "Hard Women making Hard Decisions" is also very much a thing, but tends to be less common for various reasons.)

Note that not all "Gary"/"Marty Stu"s are Hard Men Making Hard Decisions (While Hard); there exist Stus who are diplomatic or are idealistic but no less annoying. It's just that HMMHD(WH) are the subset that's the most predictable (and thus describable); other equally common types are the kind who makes all female characters want to sleep with him, or otherwise just gender-swapped versions of other Mary Sue archetypes.

=Gallery=
<gallery>
Image:Bloody_Mary_Sues.jpg|Get rid of them before they lay eggs.
File:Marysue_1517.jpg|Another way to bring Marvel and DC together again.
Image:Avatar shoopface by vfalconi.jpg|How it works.
File:Sparklypoo.jpg|What happens when Mary Sues meet each other.
File:Ma-Rey-Sue.jpg|The queen of Skub, thanks to the SJWs and vocal Red Pill advocates involved. Both sides are wrong and stupid in different ways.
File:Ultramarine-altair-mary-sue.jpg|Seems this clone actually worked, funnily enough, Altair, the stomped girl, was accused of being such a villain sue the protagonists literally had to rewrite reality to get rid of her, and only because she consented.
</gallery>

=See Also=
[[List of Mary Sues]] WARNING: [[Skub|Opinions]]

=External Links=
*[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue TVTropes' article on Mary Sues], that discusses the phenomenon and its many forms in detail.
*[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/1379217 sup/tg/ archive] of a hilarious thread with ultimate Mary Sue and PURE ENERGY in it.
*[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/1383654 sup/tg/ archive] of the Ultimate Mary Sue thread continued.
*[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/13722924/ sup/tg/ archive]; [[ITT]], the most grimdark setting ever conceived.
*[http://www.big-metto.net/RP_Wiki/index.php?title=Mirabelle_Armitage Mirabelle Armitage, D&D Mary Sure beyond Drizzt.]
*[http://www.ongoingworlds.com/blog/2011/04/the-many-different-types-of-mary-sue/ The many different types of Mary Sue]

=Footnotes=

Mary Sue

2020-09-20T17:41:26Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:B0FF:62CA:C5D1:828A: /* How Can I Tell If My Character Is A Mary Sue? */

[[Category:Mary Sue]]
{{Plot Armour}}
{{HurfDurf}}

[[Image:Marysuetest.jpg|500px|thumb|right|The perfectly sound and entirely reasonable logic of [[Internet Troll|many well-respected and completely honest critics]].]]

Overall, a '''Mary Sue''' is a character that is shamelessly self-inserted, fawned over by the canon characters, poorly developed, without flaws, and/or stupidly overpowered, who the story focuses on at the expense of the actual regular main characters. [[/tg/]] hates [[:Category:Mary Sue|Mary Sues]].

Unfortunately, after so much [[rage]] and so many [[troll]] threads, /tg/'s definition of Mary Sue has become blurred to the point that any character at all can be (and probably has been) accused of being a Mary Sue on even the flimsiest of pretenses.

Some accept nothing less than the above description, and will sooner gut you then look twice if you say it's anything else. Others prefer a more generalized definition, which refers to an overly-idealized character who exerts an unjust amount of influence upon their respective setting or story. Others still carry this meaning out to extremes and use the term to describe anyone who isn't a homeless junkie or a brooding sociopath with an alignment of Chaotic Batshit Insane. While another definition put forward by YouTuber Literature Devil in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcXVGIi1m28 this video] is that A Mary Sue is a character for which the laws of the universe bend to justify the actions of the Mary Sue. Especially when the universe bending over backwards leads to contradictions which will rightly piss most people off.

However, there is a conundrum regarding the definition. If the character is overpowered, idealized and part of an established story (such as some portrayals of Wolverine and Batman), some say that this is not a Mary Sue, as they are a canon character in an original story. For them, the term "Canon Sue" is used. The only difference between a Mary Sue and a Canon Sue (I'd like to take the time to apologize to any real-life people named "Sue" who are reading this) is a Canon Sue is an established character in the story/wish-fulfillment for the creator of the story (NOTE: few people will admit if the fictional character they create is for wish-fulfillment). For the sake of this page, the definition of Mary Sue will also include Canon Sues.

Another problem is when people use the term "Mary Sue" to refer to a "creator's pet"; a character that part of the fanbase dislikes but is adored by the creator of the character and gets treatment such as increasing focus, magnifying the importance of their role, and having the other characters talk about how awesome they are in painful ignorance — or sometimes in spite — of the fans' obvious hatred. This is not a Mary Sue though a character can be both; the two types share common traits and a Creator's Pet is more easily defined. For example; [[Marneus Calgar]] is a creator's pet, while one character who is a Mary Sues and a creator's pet is Wesley Crusher from Star Trek.

It is worth noting, however, that very rarely, authors have the skill to pull off the Mary Sue, creating a character of such epic awesomeness (e.g. [[Star Trek|Jean Luc Picard]]) that no one gives a shit.

Before you ask: Male versions of Mary Sue (and there are plenty) are known as Gary Stu or Marty Stu (both work, with usage depending on whether you prefer it to share initials or to rhyme), although for the purposes of sanity, we'll default to "Mary Sue" when referring to them.

==So, what's this "Mary Sue" thing got to do with /tg/?==

In short: [[NPC|GMPCs]], [[Elminster]]-types, [[Matt Ward]]-types, and [[Elf]]aboos.

# GMPCs have their own section in our [[NPC]] article, so we'll direct you there.
# Settings have a tendency to grow Sue-level characters if they have a sufficient number of high-powered NPCs. This is because an author needs ''somebody'' to impose some stability to the setting, and so you usually wind up needing a character that has many traits of the Mary Sue. And from there, it only takes a few writing mistakes to go into Mary Sue territory head first. ([[Elminster]] is a notable example here, but plenty of others exist.)
# Certain authors (and any setting with many authors will probably eventually find themselves with at least one of these) want to include Perfect Heroes or Perfect Villains in their settings. The problem with Perfect Heroes is that they tend to be just one or two steps from Mary Suedom, and these authors are usually bad enough writers that the resulting "Hero" goes veering off into Suedom like a plane that loses both wings goes veering off into the ground. (Matt Ward is merely the most /tg/ notable example here; more and worse examples exist, ''trust us''.)
#* A somewhat common subspecies of 3 is the "[[Waifu]]" Sue author. He wants to create his perfect Waifu, and the result is usually among the Suiest Sues Who Ever Sued. (Husbando-perpetrating female authors exist, as do gay and lesbian authors who do it for the appropriate sex, but Waifuing male authors are the most common subset to get called out, for various subtly obvious reasons.)
# When imagining a species or race, some authors lose sight of the concepts of competitive balance and competitive advantage and make one race superior to all the others, forgetting that the rule in good storytelling is [[Sanderson's laws|that flaws and limitations are more interesting than powers]]. <ref>For example, any given Superman (the character, not the book) story is not that interesting unless you either introduce an equal (or more powerful) and opposite threat (such as General Zod or Darkseid), or lean heavily on either his morality, secret identity, or kryptonite, all of which act as constraints on his power.</ref> The most common race to get this treatment are [[Elf]]s, but [[Chakat|other examples exist]].
#*Humanity gets both ends of this frequently: Depending on the bad writer in question, we can either be [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|the best thing ever]], or utter shit compared to their perfect Mai Waifu Master Race.

(Points 2 and 3 overlap, but are distinct enough in cause that they're worth separating.)

==Origin of the Concept==
The name "Mary Sue" comes from a parody of shitty [[Star Trek]] fanfiction called [http://www.wiccananime.com/amslt/amslttrekkiestale ''A Trekkie's Tale''] (no, seriously, that's the origin, look it up if you don't believe me.) First written in [[Old School Roleplaying|1974]] by Paula Smith, the original Lieutenant Mary Sue was a parody of the half-Vulcan jailbait and other shameless self-inserts that had been clogging up the Star Trek fanfic magazines. The trolling was so epic that her name became permanently ingrained in the vocabulary of every fandom on the planet, and this makes Paula Smith a paragon of trolls.

The term is commonly used by [[troll]]s, and can most easily be spotted by a blanket accusation of a character being a Sue without attempting to justify actual reasons behind it. More clever trolls will attempt to offer some explanation that is deliberately intended to get under the offended party's skin.

==A Few Special Cases of Sues==
Here are a few complicating factors in any simple definition of what "Mary Sue" means, because critics are mean like that:

===Male Sues===
First and foremost: A Mary Sue, as stated above, does not need to be a female, woman, or girl. There are plenty of male Sues, usually called "Gary Stu" or "Marty Stu". (See also the "Hard Man Making Hard Decisions (While Hard)" well below.)

===Villain Sues===
Note that the Mary Sue need not be the hero of the piece. A large minority of Sues are villains (either protagonist or antagonist).

Some well-known characters with a tendency in the hands of bad writers to become Villain Sues include [[Batman | The Joker]], Magneto, Doctor Doom, and [[Star Wars | Admiral Thrawn]]. And then there's the flat-out Villain Sues in a single writer's (or at least well regulated and coordinated between several) canon, such as Red Hulk's initial appearances, or the show version of Ramsay Bolton. Or, to be more directly /tg/ relevant, [[Fabius Bile]] and [[World of Darkness | Samuel Haight]]. [[Chaos]], especially with how it's been portrayed in the last several years, often gets called a faction of Villain Sues.

===Sue Species And Orders===
Further, it's possible for the Sueness to be spread across an entire species or other group of people. The accusation is more commonly (and more properly) thrown around on the species side of that line (Internalized Fantastic Racism be a Real World thing, yo). The best-known cases of species-wide-Suedom are probably [[Chakats]] and any given [[Elf]]aboos' version of Elves. The best known case of a Sue Organization or Order are the [[Ultramarines|Ultrasmurfs]].

===The AntiSue and Sympathy Sue===
You'd think that the opposite of a Mary Sue wouldn't be a kind of Mary Sue all its own? Well, you'd be wrong. Comes in two flavors:

* The perpetrator of the Sue might think "I'll just pull a George Costanza, and do the opposite of my instincts!", not recognizing that what made their instincts bad was more in amplitude than in direction. There are two subflavors of this:
** Characters who are Just The Worst in some way (ugly/stupid/unpopular/what-have-you), but is still recognizably a Sue (see, for reference, the worse Neelix episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, or Bella Swan from [[Twilight]])
** There's also the "Butt Monkey" type, where the character is essentially just a Mary Sue in full reverse; there's the same "the plot entirely revolves around the main character" problem, the same "that makes no sense" and "things that only happened because the Author said so" plots, the same "there must be mind control involved" character reactions, just set to negative instead of positive. This version's inclusion in Suedom is rather more controversial, as so much is mirrored that it's hard to differentiate the "real Sues" from just "the author's chew toy". The result is still bad writing; it's just that there is some debate about whether it counts as "Mary Sue Bad Writing" or just "Bad Writing".<ref>To repeat the message of this entire collection of Sue types: The definition of "Mary Sue" can be rather slippery, even when ignoring internet trolls.</ref>
* The perpetrator of the Sue is going for Sympathy. Which, again, is only a change in direction, not in amplitude.

The "Butt Monkey" case results in an extremely noticeable character archetype that is not usually called a Mary Sue, but is just as annoying: the one guy who is theoretically on the side of the heroes, but is useless, wrong about everything, an asshole, and generally disliked by the rest of the heroes, and who spends all of his or her time complaining or offering obviously stupid ideas. Remember Eric the Cavalier from the 1980s D&D cartoon? How about Nathan Ramsey from Seven Days? The Grand Vizier from War Planets? The magical ragdoll character "One" from the movie "9"? Avoid writing characters like this. Please.

===The Comedy Sue===
This is where a Character is a Sue and they are utterly perfect, but the audience is not supposed to be in awe of how good they are, we are supposed to laugh at the ridiculousness of it.

This kind of Sue can actually work; for examples, see the anime "Haven't You Heard I'm Sakamoto" and to a lesser extent "One Punch Man" or even Popeye at times for examples of this kind of Sue. They never fail, but we're suppose to laugh at them doing it.

The methods used for this humor range from deconstructive parodies (e.g. "We've needed a new house here at Hogwarts to accommodate all the...special girls, so welcome to House Sparklypoo!") to straight deconstruction (Take One Punch Man's Caped Baldy: instead of people fawning over him, nobody believes his feats and call him a fraud, while he's also constantly frustrated by the lack of a good challenge) to anti-climax (God-Man, pictured below in this article) to the whole thing being a mere joke delivery system (classic Bugs Bunny or Popeye cartoons).

'''''However''''', in order for this to work you need your tongue so far up your cheek it's basically bored out through the other sides, and you actually need ''''' talent. ''''' And the talent part applies even when the character exists solely for joke delivery (and thus requires no characterization beyond a couple of basic traits).

===Mary Suetopia===
For that extra bit of mind screw: There are cases of the "Mary Sue" accusation being thrown, with some justice, at entire ''civilizations''. [[TVTropes]] calls this particular variant "Mary Suetopia". Just about any Utopian work, and many a Dystopian work (*cough*Draka*cough*) can have this accusation thrown at them; commonly comes in three subspecies:

# Pure Preaching. Not just religious, but, in the story, any ideology that the author thinks knows The One True Path To (Happiness/Truth/God/Prosperity/etc.). Usually the most Sueish of the lot.
# Stories about or involving the Fall of such a civilization (sometimes incidentally; see, for example, many interpretations of [[Superman|Krypton]], where the only important part about the place is that it blew up after sending one last ship out to Earth), or about the conflict between two civilizations, one of whom is theoretically "better" than the other (e.g., some of the Culture books, or, on the flip side, [[Orks]] vs. just about anybody else). Can be Sueish, but can also avoid it, depending on the focus, nature, and quality of the work.
# Social Satire/Commentary. Here, the point of the work was less on how perfect this civilization is, and more on using it to comment on the culture in which it was written, or the state of the world at the time. Think 1984, Gulliver's Travels, Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, the original ''Utopia'', and so on. Can be the least Sueish of the three, depending on writing quality.

(As a side note, this version of Suedom is particularly /tg/ relevant; each version of Warhammer alone has vast amounts of the latter two (although admittedly in a usually fairly non-Sueish way), and there are too many cases of the first case in Science Fiction settings.)

==Watsonian vs. Doylist definition of "Sue"==

A futher complicating factor in any definition of "Mary Sue" is the Watsonian vs. Doylist definition problem.

For the unfamiliar, criticism sometimes differentiate between a "Watsonian", or "in-universe based" explanation of something (e.g., "Superpowerman got beaten by Evilvillianman because he had the flu!") and a "Doylist", or "author-centered" explanation (e.g., "Superpowerman got beaten by Evilvillianman because the rest of the story doesn't work if Superpowerman wins that fight.") "Watsonian" and "Doylist" are named for the fictional and real life authors of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Dr. John Watson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle respectively. Holmes fans being really creepily fond of coming up with Watsonian explanations for plot holes probably helps.

How does this relate to Mary Sue definitions? Well, the two common ways of describing a Sue are Watsonian, where being Overpowered and Always Right is the relevant problem, and the Doylist definition, where the relationship of the author to the character is the relevant problem. We employ a mixture of the two, because guessing what the author was thinking can get very unreliable very quickly and even when they're questioned about this authors - like any other people - can be blind to their biases or lie. Regardless, the purely power-and-rightness-based definition can easily start returning false results if context and sanity are not considered.

==How Can I Tell If My Character Is A Mary Sue?==
Each "Yes" answer gives your character a piece of Mary Sueness.
[[File:God-Man.gif|thumb|300px|right|God-Man, providing a particularly extreme example (albeit a parody)]]
* Does their personal morality always perfectly match objective reality? To put it another way, is there no difference between describing their opinion and simply narrating what was actually going on in a scene?
* Do they start the story at the pinnacle of achievement and have no way to grow or improve?
** Or do their new skills and abilities come from your ass at just the time they need them?
* Do they have unexplained frequent good luck, even when by all logic they should fail in that area?
* Is it a fan character that is better than the canon characters? (As in, "more powerful and gets all the attention", not "better written". If it's the latter, all the power to you.)
* Do they have physical features, powers or items that are impossible to have or extremely rare going by the rules of the setting (ie; a human with cat eyes and wings with no explanation in real-world based fiction, or a ridiculous item such as a weapon which is [[Noise Marines|chainsaw, electric-guitar and machine-gun combined]] in a swords-and-sorcery setting)?
* Do they have the most powerful ability or power in a setting, without any sacrifices? (For example, a character that can use magic which would destroy any enemy, without any negative effects. But if a character has that ability, and it reduces his lifespan, damages him forever and/or kills everyone including his comrades, it's not ''that'' overpowered.)
* Are they connected to the canon characters or do they become connected to them? This usually takes the form of being a "long-lost" relative or love interest to a canon character.
* Do they get a lot of shilling? For example; do all the canon characters suddenly start talking about a fan character, with their presence in the story largely relegated to providing opportunities for the new character to show how pure, powerful, good-hearted, etc they are? Or are they shown getting the better of a character more powerful than them with no explanation as to why?
* Do you never allow other characters to dislike them?
** [[Eragon|Or do you punish those other characters for disliking your character by portraying them negatively and/or making something terrible happen to them]]? (For example; making the one character who dislikes the Mary Sue unlikable themselves, a villain or "coincidentally" lose their home)
* Are they someone's self-proclaimed [[furry|fursona]]? (If so, stop reading this list and burn them for [[heresy]]).
** The Sonichu exception: If the author is making fun of ''somebody else's'' fursona, and isn't a furry themselves, everything is perfectly fine, at least as far as Mary Suedom is concerned.
* Do they share any of the same beliefs as the work's creator and openly express them? (for example, the protagonists of stories by Ayn Rand, Seth MacFarlane or Jack Chick).
* Do they always make good decisions? And/or bad ones that are suddenly revealed to have been a good choice?
* Do you use absolutes like "always," "everybody," or "never" when describing their ''abilities''? (Those word being used to describe their ''behavior'' are usually okay, if slightly suspect (bad writers have an attraction to absolutes).)
* Do they feature an entirely contrived "weakness" that doesn't affect them any time it would harm them (such as being clumsy ''unless'' they are required to perform a great feat of athleticism) or isn't really a weakness (such as being too kind or righteous "for their own good") which was clearly added solely so the author could point to it when accused of writing a Sue?
* Is the main problem in the story one that this character can easily fix or solve on their own? (Doesn't count if they're the only character in the story).
* Do they have powers that no-one else has.
* Is it a protagonist character written by Matt Ward, Kim Dal Young, Stephenie Mayer, Karen Traviss, Onision, Ayn Rand or Terry <del>Good</del>Badkind? (Note, a Mary Sue can be written by someone who's none of these people.)

Since then, it's been realized that a character doesn't need to be a self-insert to be a Mary Sue, but it helps. Everyone has their own criteria for what makes one, but the big three traits are:
#They are super-powerful/hyper-competent. In established settings, usually more so than canon characters. Better leadership skills than a McDohl, faster than Sonic, etc.
#The story completely revolves around them, even in... no, ESPECIALLY in established settings.
#They can do no wrong. Everyone loves the Mary Sue and defends them even against perfectly reasonable concerns, invariably demonizing people that make these concerns.

Bonus points:
#The Mary Sue's competence doesn't match the creator's knowledge, leading to things like "The greatest Scorpion Clan shinobi EVAR" walking around in broad daylight in stereotypical ninja gear.
#The Mary Sue is a hypocritical monster and the creator is totally blind to this fact.
#Other characters comment on how much better at their own skills the Mary Sue is like they're happy for her, even if the character is known for being arrogant and standoff-ish.
#Characters that don't react well to the Sue's 'harmless pranks' see the light and begin to love the Mary Sue as well.
#Those that don't turn out to be evil spies or something.

A lot of traits (e.g. too-long-names and heterochrome eyes) are assumed to be signs of Mary Sues, but in themselves don't make a character one. This is because the "But I'm '''''Specul'''''" features are more a symptom than a cause, and all of them can be used in a non-Sueish manner (for example, a character with a twenty-part name is meant by the author to be taken as overly pretentious, and is reacted to in-universe as such).
 

=="I Hate This Competent Character"-Syndrome==
Believe it or not, of the vast majority of characters called Mary Sues or Gary Stues in fandoms, only a small handful will actually qualify as a true Mary Sue. Remember, one of the defining traits of Mary Sue is in their relation to the author; either the author sees them as herself/himself, or views them as fap or schlick material (or worse, [[waifu]] material). As a general rule: If the character makes a mistake, and it's clear that '''the author''' understands that the decision is a mistake, then they're probably not fully a Mary Sue.

The rest are what could be called "I Hate This Competent Character"-syndrome. This happens when a character, usually in the spotlight (so not the background character that has no bearing on the story), is widely disliked by a large part of a fandom, but with no tangible thing to latch that hate unto. What happens is that the character gets called a Mary Sue for being too competent, but this accusation has some issues of its own. One, as we've seen in this page, a true Mary Sue is a self-insert (and if the character is a super-naturally competent self-insert; yep that's most likely a Mary Sue), and a competent character need not be.

Second, in all the fiction we so love, like [[Setting Aesthetics|fantasy, sci-fi and all the rest]], main and side characters are ''ridiculously'' competent, sometimes as a byproduct of what kind of setting it is. That is why settings like [[A Song of Ice and Fire]] is notable for deconstructing competence, showing that a sword in hand does not a hero make - but that's a '' deconstruction.'' In most settings, heroes just are competent; the real sense of adversity and challenge usually comes from something else, like emotional struggles, political or societal issues and other faults. Even if there's a plotpoint about a hero being too weak to beat their enemy in one-to-one combat, chances are the main feature of that story arch is how the hero ''feels'' about it, rather than the struggle itself. Yeah sure, our hero learns the cool "I Win" technique, but that's not the important part; the important part is what kept them from learning it in the first place. Is it too dangerous? Did they damage themselves or friends with it once? Does it take them too close to the enemy they hate? And so on.

Let's take a classic, Superman. Superman is hyper-over-the-top-super competent, being so strong, resilient and fast that no one can stand up to him - but it works, because his challenges lies in how he utilizes that power, and how he relates to a mostly muggle world. So the character isn't a Mary Sue - but if you do not like Superman, maybe you wanna latch unto something to hate on... And that is likely this competence.

It's especially notable in settings where characters are automatically assumed to be competent if they are a main character. Examples like [[Star Wars]], [[Bioware|Mass Effect]], [[Dungeons and Dragons]] (depending on the whims of the GM), [[Lord of the Rings]] and other magical settings are filled with characters who are just competent by being a hero.

Good examples of "I Hate This Competent Character"-syndrome are characters like James Bond, [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Jon Snow]], [[Eldrad]], [[World of Warcraft|Thrall]], [[Batman]], and Rick Sanchez; all main-ish characters who are competent and may be dislikable for various different reasons... And if you dislike or even hate some of these characters? ''That's totally fucking fine.'' But make sure to actually use your ding dang words rather than hop on the bandwagon and use a term that doesn't mean what you think it does.

We all love and hate different characters, that's called taste. But competence, even relatively unexplained competence, is not a marker that indicates Mary Suedom.

===Bad Writer (Sub-)Syndrome===

A further note to the above: There are a non-trivial number of these type of characters who pass through the hands of a lot of writers; in this case, they can be Sues, '''but only when in the hands of unskilled writers'''. A bad writer will focus on the awesome, not on the structure and contrast that support it.

For example, hypercompetent characters like Batman or The Doctor are usually only interesting in scenarios that ''actually call for'' that hypercompetence. In that case, if the audience can see the solution a mile away, or can see an obviously better solution to the situation, the result is usually not as "awesome" as the author desires--unless the point is to demonstrate the flaws of the character, in which case, we're still moving away from "awesome", but ''intentionally'' this time.

If this is happening, just relax, and let the Dork Age pass, hoping that the next writer will actually be competent.

== Mary Sues in Roleplaying Games ==
It is important to realize that when playing an RPG, either as a player or as a DM, the standards for "unacceptable Mary Sue" change dramatically. Unlike if you are writing a novel, you are not the sole author of the story, nor are you the only main character. Thus certain traits that are completely fine for a character in a novel become things to avoid when making a character (NPC or PC) in an RPG. A good example of this would be Harry Potter. As the main character in a series of novels, making him the Chosen One is perfectly fine, because the story literally revolves around him, and the reader is meant to identify with him. If someone where to make Harry Potter in an RPG, it could easily become a problem, since him being "The Chosen One" by definition overshadows everyone else's characters. That is not to say that it should ''never'' be done, but it is something that should be discussed and agreed upon by the entire group beforehand. The reverse can also be true: what makes for a good RPG character does not always make for a good character in a novel (or, more accurately, ''unless well written'', certain traits common in RPG characters do not always make for a good character in a novel.) This is even more important when you are the DM; the players are the main characters, not the NPCs, and trying to pretend otherwise (usually via DMPCs) is one of the quickest ways to ruin a campaign.

For our purposes, we at 1d4chan try to keep our focus more on the tropes related to Suedom, and specific examples (usually Warhammer related). If you have a story of a specific Sue-abusing player or DM, there's probably a thread in [https://boards.4channel.org/tg/ the obvious place]. Go bore us there (where we can ignore you) instead of boring us here (where we'll need to revert you).

==Negating the Mary Sue==
Interestingly, there hasn't been really much written about how to defeat a May Sue aside from trolling, but we may identify a few ways to deal with Mary Sues and even Canon Sues:
*The first one, and quite accessible is character development, while this implies a risk of expanding the infection it is possible to remove a Sue status with a good writer either making fanfiction or a spin-off where the Mary Sue is changed for the better. Examples of this has been seen in long-existent characters which, due to good writing, become more down to earth, with the added bonus of annoying fans of the Sue period of time to no end. After all, one fanfic denies another.
*The second one is retcon, as the easiest way to annihilate a Mary Sue is to achieve the general consensus that it never happened. This is harder of course, as it requires the creators recognizing they made the wrong decisions or at least conceding to the fans. It can happen, but it can only be through official involvement, which requires a lot of fan reaction to happen.
*Third, have them operate in something resembling the real world; their impossible perfectness is treated as impossible by the people within the setting, and their actions have unforeseen consequences. (See, for reference, good quality [[Superman]] and [[Batman]] stories that don't focus on making either character more "human". Or the two protagonists from One-Punch Man, who are very much overpowered, but the focus of the series is a comedy based on ''how little satisfaction'' they find ''due to their overpoweredness''. The comic book Irredeemable is another good example, as the Plutonian comes across as a deconstruction of this character, showing how he uses his powers like an immature man-child and wipes out an entire country all because the entire world doesn't love him completely and adore him, demonstrating how much of a dick he is.)
*Finally, when it comes to reality, badly written characters end falling by their own weight. This is the reason no one remembers most of the overpowered characters added in fanfiction.net while everyone remembers cool, well-molded characters - after all, reality ensues.

Note that like overpoweredness, Mary Suedom is relative to the context of the work. Much like how if in a game everybody is overpowered, nobody actually is; if you are describing everyone in a setting as a Mary Sue, more than likely you're just in a "cast of snowflakes" setting, like superhero comics or transformers. Here, everyone of import is super amazing and special with a lot of weight put on their decisions and actions. (Exception: If one side of the conflict has a monopoly on both awesome and author-intended-sympathy, the "Sue" accusation starts becoming more relevant again.)

[[Troll|Or maybe you're just a dumbass flinging around buzzwords at things you don't like.]]

==Hard Men Making Hard Decisions (While Hard)==

A side note: A specific kind of male version of Mary Sue is also well known. He is usually described as a "Hard Man making Hard Decisions", but works using that description are usually sufficiently closer to "porn logic" than actual human logic that it's usually called "Wank material". (Note that "Hard Women making Hard Decisions" is also very much a thing, but tends to be less common for various reasons.)

Note that not all "Gary"/"Marty Stu"s are Hard Men Making Hard Decisions (While Hard); there exist Stus who are diplomatic or are idealistic but no less annoying. It's just that HMMHD(WH) are the subset that's the most predictable (and thus describable); other equally common types are the kind who makes all female characters want to sleep with him, or otherwise just gender-swapped versions of other Mary Sue archetypes.

=Gallery=
<gallery>
Image:Bloody_Mary_Sues.jpg|Get rid of them before they lay eggs.
File:Marysue_1517.jpg|Another way to bring Marvel and DC together again.
Image:Avatar shoopface by vfalconi.jpg|How it works.
File:Sparklypoo.jpg|What happens when Mary Sues meet each other.
File:Ma-Rey-Sue.jpg|The queen of Skub, thanks to the SJWs and vocal Red Pill advocates involved. Both sides are wrong and stupid in different ways.
File:Ultramarine-altair-mary-sue.jpg|Seems this clone actually worked, funnily enough, Altair, the stomped girl, was accused of being such a villain sue the protagonists literally had to rewrite reality to get rid of her, and only because she consented.
</gallery>

=See Also=
[[List of Mary Sues]] WARNING: [[Skub|Opinions]]

=External Links=
*[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue TVTropes' article on Mary Sues], that discusses the phenomenon and its many forms in detail.
*[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/1379217 sup/tg/ archive] of a hilarious thread with ultimate Mary Sue and PURE ENERGY in it.
*[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/1383654 sup/tg/ archive] of the Ultimate Mary Sue thread continued.
*[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/13722924/ sup/tg/ archive]; [[ITT]], the most grimdark setting ever conceived.
*[http://www.big-metto.net/RP_Wiki/index.php?title=Mirabelle_Armitage Mirabelle Armitage, D&D Mary Sure beyond Drizzt.]
*[http://www.ongoingworlds.com/blog/2011/04/the-many-different-types-of-mary-sue/ The many different types of Mary Sue]

=Footnotes=

Mary Sue

2020-09-20T17:32:28Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:B0FF:62CA:C5D1:828A: /* How Can I Tell If My Character Is A Mary Sue? */

[[Category:Mary Sue]]
{{Plot Armour}}
{{HurfDurf}}

[[Image:Marysuetest.jpg|500px|thumb|right|The perfectly sound and entirely reasonable logic of [[Internet Troll|many well-respected and completely honest critics]].]]

Overall, a '''Mary Sue''' is a character that is shamelessly self-inserted, fawned over by the canon characters, poorly developed, without flaws, and/or stupidly overpowered, who the story focuses on at the expense of the actual regular main characters. [[/tg/]] hates [[:Category:Mary Sue|Mary Sues]].

Unfortunately, after so much [[rage]] and so many [[troll]] threads, /tg/'s definition of Mary Sue has become blurred to the point that any character at all can be (and probably has been) accused of being a Mary Sue on even the flimsiest of pretenses.

Some accept nothing less than the above description, and will sooner gut you then look twice if you say it's anything else. Others prefer a more generalized definition, which refers to an overly-idealized character who exerts an unjust amount of influence upon their respective setting or story. Others still carry this meaning out to extremes and use the term to describe anyone who isn't a homeless junkie or a brooding sociopath with an alignment of Chaotic Batshit Insane. While another definition put forward by YouTuber Literature Devil in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcXVGIi1m28 this video] is that A Mary Sue is a character for which the laws of the universe bend to justify the actions of the Mary Sue. Especially when the universe bending over backwards leads to contradictions which will rightly piss most people off.

However, there is a conundrum regarding the definition. If the character is overpowered, idealized and part of an established story (such as some portrayals of Wolverine and Batman), some say that this is not a Mary Sue, as they are a canon character in an original story. For them, the term "Canon Sue" is used. The only difference between a Mary Sue and a Canon Sue (I'd like to take the time to apologize to any real-life people named "Sue" who are reading this) is a Canon Sue is an established character in the story/wish-fulfillment for the creator of the story (NOTE: few people will admit if the fictional character they create is for wish-fulfillment). For the sake of this page, the definition of Mary Sue will also include Canon Sues.

Another problem is when people use the term "Mary Sue" to refer to a "creator's pet"; a character that part of the fanbase dislikes but is adored by the creator of the character and gets treatment such as increasing focus, magnifying the importance of their role, and having the other characters talk about how awesome they are in painful ignorance — or sometimes in spite — of the fans' obvious hatred. This is not a Mary Sue though a character can be both; the two types share common traits and a Creator's Pet is more easily defined. For example; [[Marneus Calgar]] is a creator's pet, while one character who is a Mary Sues and a creator's pet is Wesley Crusher from Star Trek.

It is worth noting, however, that very rarely, authors have the skill to pull off the Mary Sue, creating a character of such epic awesomeness (e.g. [[Star Trek|Jean Luc Picard]]) that no one gives a shit.

Before you ask: Male versions of Mary Sue (and there are plenty) are known as Gary Stu or Marty Stu (both work, with usage depending on whether you prefer it to share initials or to rhyme), although for the purposes of sanity, we'll default to "Mary Sue" when referring to them.

==So, what's this "Mary Sue" thing got to do with /tg/?==

In short: [[NPC|GMPCs]], [[Elminster]]-types, [[Matt Ward]]-types, and [[Elf]]aboos.

# GMPCs have their own section in our [[NPC]] article, so we'll direct you there.
# Settings have a tendency to grow Sue-level characters if they have a sufficient number of high-powered NPCs. This is because an author needs ''somebody'' to impose some stability to the setting, and so you usually wind up needing a character that has many traits of the Mary Sue. And from there, it only takes a few writing mistakes to go into Mary Sue territory head first. ([[Elminster]] is a notable example here, but plenty of others exist.)
# Certain authors (and any setting with many authors will probably eventually find themselves with at least one of these) want to include Perfect Heroes or Perfect Villains in their settings. The problem with Perfect Heroes is that they tend to be just one or two steps from Mary Suedom, and these authors are usually bad enough writers that the resulting "Hero" goes veering off into Suedom like a plane that loses both wings goes veering off into the ground. (Matt Ward is merely the most /tg/ notable example here; more and worse examples exist, ''trust us''.)
#* A somewhat common subspecies of 3 is the "[[Waifu]]" Sue author. He wants to create his perfect Waifu, and the result is usually among the Suiest Sues Who Ever Sued. (Husbando-perpetrating female authors exist, as do gay and lesbian authors who do it for the appropriate sex, but Waifuing male authors are the most common subset to get called out, for various subtly obvious reasons.)
# When imagining a species or race, some authors lose sight of the concepts of competitive balance and competitive advantage and make one race superior to all the others, forgetting that the rule in good storytelling is [[Sanderson's laws|that flaws and limitations are more interesting than powers]]. <ref>For example, any given Superman (the character, not the book) story is not that interesting unless you either introduce an equal (or more powerful) and opposite threat (such as General Zod or Darkseid), or lean heavily on either his morality, secret identity, or kryptonite, all of which act as constraints on his power.</ref> The most common race to get this treatment are [[Elf]]s, but [[Chakat|other examples exist]].
#*Humanity gets both ends of this frequently: Depending on the bad writer in question, we can either be [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|the best thing ever]], or utter shit compared to their perfect Mai Waifu Master Race.

(Points 2 and 3 overlap, but are distinct enough in cause that they're worth separating.)

==Origin of the Concept==
The name "Mary Sue" comes from a parody of shitty [[Star Trek]] fanfiction called [http://www.wiccananime.com/amslt/amslttrekkiestale ''A Trekkie's Tale''] (no, seriously, that's the origin, look it up if you don't believe me.) First written in [[Old School Roleplaying|1974]] by Paula Smith, the original Lieutenant Mary Sue was a parody of the half-Vulcan jailbait and other shameless self-inserts that had been clogging up the Star Trek fanfic magazines. The trolling was so epic that her name became permanently ingrained in the vocabulary of every fandom on the planet, and this makes Paula Smith a paragon of trolls.

The term is commonly used by [[troll]]s, and can most easily be spotted by a blanket accusation of a character being a Sue without attempting to justify actual reasons behind it. More clever trolls will attempt to offer some explanation that is deliberately intended to get under the offended party's skin.

==A Few Special Cases of Sues==
Here are a few complicating factors in any simple definition of what "Mary Sue" means, because critics are mean like that:

===Male Sues===
First and foremost: A Mary Sue, as stated above, does not need to be a female, woman, or girl. There are plenty of male Sues, usually called "Gary Stu" or "Marty Stu". (See also the "Hard Man Making Hard Decisions (While Hard)" well below.)

===Villain Sues===
Note that the Mary Sue need not be the hero of the piece. A large minority of Sues are villains (either protagonist or antagonist).

Some well-known characters with a tendency in the hands of bad writers to become Villain Sues include [[Batman | The Joker]], Magneto, Doctor Doom, and [[Star Wars | Admiral Thrawn]]. And then there's the flat-out Villain Sues in a single writer's (or at least well regulated and coordinated between several) canon, such as Red Hulk's initial appearances, or the show version of Ramsay Bolton. Or, to be more directly /tg/ relevant, [[Fabius Bile]] and [[World of Darkness | Samuel Haight]]. [[Chaos]], especially with how it's been portrayed in the last several years, often gets called a faction of Villain Sues.

===Sue Species And Orders===
Further, it's possible for the Sueness to be spread across an entire species or other group of people. The accusation is more commonly (and more properly) thrown around on the species side of that line (Internalized Fantastic Racism be a Real World thing, yo). The best-known cases of species-wide-Suedom are probably [[Chakats]] and any given [[Elf]]aboos' version of Elves. The best known case of a Sue Organization or Order are the [[Ultramarines|Ultrasmurfs]].

===The AntiSue and Sympathy Sue===
You'd think that the opposite of a Mary Sue wouldn't be a kind of Mary Sue all its own? Well, you'd be wrong. Comes in two flavors:

* The perpetrator of the Sue might think "I'll just pull a George Costanza, and do the opposite of my instincts!", not recognizing that what made their instincts bad was more in amplitude than in direction. There are two subflavors of this:
** Characters who are Just The Worst in some way (ugly/stupid/unpopular/what-have-you), but is still recognizably a Sue (see, for reference, the worse Neelix episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, or Bella Swan from [[Twilight]])
** There's also the "Butt Monkey" type, where the character is essentially just a Mary Sue in full reverse; there's the same "the plot entirely revolves around the main character" problem, the same "that makes no sense" and "things that only happened because the Author said so" plots, the same "there must be mind control involved" character reactions, just set to negative instead of positive. This version's inclusion in Suedom is rather more controversial, as so much is mirrored that it's hard to differentiate the "real Sues" from just "the author's chew toy". The result is still bad writing; it's just that there is some debate about whether it counts as "Mary Sue Bad Writing" or just "Bad Writing".<ref>To repeat the message of this entire collection of Sue types: The definition of "Mary Sue" can be rather slippery, even when ignoring internet trolls.</ref>
* The perpetrator of the Sue is going for Sympathy. Which, again, is only a change in direction, not in amplitude.

The "Butt Monkey" case results in an extremely noticeable character archetype that is not usually called a Mary Sue, but is just as annoying: the one guy who is theoretically on the side of the heroes, but is useless, wrong about everything, an asshole, and generally disliked by the rest of the heroes, and who spends all of his or her time complaining or offering obviously stupid ideas. Remember Eric the Cavalier from the 1980s D&D cartoon? How about Nathan Ramsey from Seven Days? The Grand Vizier from War Planets? The magical ragdoll character "One" from the movie "9"? Avoid writing characters like this. Please.

===The Comedy Sue===
This is where a Character is a Sue and they are utterly perfect, but the audience is not supposed to be in awe of how good they are, we are supposed to laugh at the ridiculousness of it.

This kind of Sue can actually work; for examples, see the anime "Haven't You Heard I'm Sakamoto" and to a lesser extent "One Punch Man" or even Popeye at times for examples of this kind of Sue. They never fail, but we're suppose to laugh at them doing it.

The methods used for this humor range from deconstructive parodies (e.g. "We've needed a new house here at Hogwarts to accommodate all the...special girls, so welcome to House Sparklypoo!") to straight deconstruction (Take One Punch Man's Caped Baldy: instead of people fawning over him, nobody believes his feats and call him a fraud, while he's also constantly frustrated by the lack of a good challenge) to anti-climax (God-Man, pictured below in this article) to the whole thing being a mere joke delivery system (classic Bugs Bunny or Popeye cartoons).

'''''However''''', in order for this to work you need your tongue so far up your cheek it's basically bored out through the other sides, and you actually need ''''' talent. ''''' And the talent part applies even when the character exists solely for joke delivery (and thus requires no characterization beyond a couple of basic traits).

===Mary Suetopia===
For that extra bit of mind screw: There are cases of the "Mary Sue" accusation being thrown, with some justice, at entire ''civilizations''. [[TVTropes]] calls this particular variant "Mary Suetopia". Just about any Utopian work, and many a Dystopian work (*cough*Draka*cough*) can have this accusation thrown at them; commonly comes in three subspecies:

# Pure Preaching. Not just religious, but, in the story, any ideology that the author thinks knows The One True Path To (Happiness/Truth/God/Prosperity/etc.). Usually the most Sueish of the lot.
# Stories about or involving the Fall of such a civilization (sometimes incidentally; see, for example, many interpretations of [[Superman|Krypton]], where the only important part about the place is that it blew up after sending one last ship out to Earth), or about the conflict between two civilizations, one of whom is theoretically "better" than the other (e.g., some of the Culture books, or, on the flip side, [[Orks]] vs. just about anybody else). Can be Sueish, but can also avoid it, depending on the focus, nature, and quality of the work.
# Social Satire/Commentary. Here, the point of the work was less on how perfect this civilization is, and more on using it to comment on the culture in which it was written, or the state of the world at the time. Think 1984, Gulliver's Travels, Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, the original ''Utopia'', and so on. Can be the least Sueish of the three, depending on writing quality.

(As a side note, this version of Suedom is particularly /tg/ relevant; each version of Warhammer alone has vast amounts of the latter two (although admittedly in a usually fairly non-Sueish way), and there are too many cases of the first case in Science Fiction settings.)

==Watsonian vs. Doylist definition of "Sue"==

A futher complicating factor in any definition of "Mary Sue" is the Watsonian vs. Doylist definition problem.

For the unfamiliar, criticism sometimes differentiate between a "Watsonian", or "in-universe based" explanation of something (e.g., "Superpowerman got beaten by Evilvillianman because he had the flu!") and a "Doylist", or "author-centered" explanation (e.g., "Superpowerman got beaten by Evilvillianman because the rest of the story doesn't work if Superpowerman wins that fight.") "Watsonian" and "Doylist" are named for the fictional and real life authors of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Dr. John Watson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle respectively. Holmes fans being really creepily fond of coming up with Watsonian explanations for plot holes probably helps.

How does this relate to Mary Sue definitions? Well, the two common ways of describing a Sue are Watsonian, where being Overpowered and Always Right is the relevant problem, and the Doylist definition, where the relationship of the author to the character is the relevant problem. We employ a mixture of the two, because guessing what the author was thinking can get very unreliable very quickly and even when they're questioned about this authors - like any other people - can be blind to their biases or lie. Regardless, the purely power-and-rightness-based definition can easily start returning false results if context and sanity are not considered.

==How Can I Tell If My Character Is A Mary Sue?==
Each "Yes" answer gives your character a piece of Mary Sueness.
[[File:God-Man.gif|thumb|300px|right|God-Man, providing a particularly extreme example (albeit a parody)]]
* Does their personal morality always perfectly match objective reality? To put it another way, is there no difference between describing their opinion and simply narrating what was actually going on in a scene?
* Do they start the story at the pinnacle of achievement and have no way to grow or improve?
** Or do their new skills and abilities come from your ass at just the time they need them?
* Do they have unexplained frequent good luck, even when by all logic they should fail in that area?
* Is it a fan character that is better than the canon characters? (As in, "more powerful and gets all the attention", not "better written". If it's the latter, all the power to you.)
* Do they have physical features, powers or items that are impossible to have or extremely rare going by the rules of the setting (ie; a human with cat eyes and wings with no explanation in real-world based fiction, or a ridiculous item such as a weapon which is [[Noise Marines|chainsaw, electric-guitar and machine-gun combined]] in a swords-and-sorcery setting)?
* Do they have the most powerful ability or power in a setting, without any sacrifices? (For example, a character that can use magic which would destroy any enemy, without any negative effects. But if a character has that ability, and it reduces his lifespan, damages him forever and/or kills everyone including his comrades, it's not ''that'' overpowered.)
* Are they connected to the canon characters or do they become connected to them? This usually takes the form of being a "long-lost" relative or love interest to a canon character.
* Do they get a lot of shilling? For example; do all the canon characters suddenly start talking about a fan character, with their presence in the story largely relegated to providing opportunities for the new character to show how pure, powerful, good-hearted, etc they are?
* Do you never allow other characters to dislike them?
** [[Eragon|Or do you punish those other characters for disliking your character by portraying them negatively and/or making something terrible happen to them]]? (For example; making them unlikable, a secondary villain, or having the one character that dislikes the Mary Sue "coincidentally" have their home destroyed)
* Are they someone's self-proclaimed [[furry|fursona]]? (If so, stop reading this list and burn them for [[heresy]]).
** The Sonichu exception: If the author is making fun of ''somebody else's'' fursona, and isn't a furry themselves, everything is perfectly fine, at least as far as Mary Suedom is concerned.
* Do they share any beliefs as the work's creator and openly express them? (for example, the protagonists of stories by Ayn Rand, Gene Roddenberry or Jack Chick).
* Do they always make good decisions? And/or bad ones that are suddenly revealed to have been a good choice?
* Do you use absolutes like "always," "everybody," or "never" when describing their ''abilities''? (Those word being used to describe their ''behavior'' are usually okay, if slightly suspect (bad writers have an attraction to absolutes).)
* Do they feature an entirely contrived "weakness" that doesn't affect them any time it would harm them (such as being clumsy ''unless'' they are required to perform a great feat of athleticism) or isn't really a weakness (such as being too kind or righteous "for their own good") which was clearly added solely so the author could point to it when accused of writing a Sue?
* Is the main problem in the story one that this character can easily fix or solve on their own? (Doesn't count if they're the only character in the story).
*Do they have powers that no-one else has.
* Is it a protagonist character written by Matt Ward, Kim Dal Young, Stephenie Mayer, Karen Traviss, Onision, Ayn Rand or Terry <del>Good</del>Badkind? (Note, a Mary Sue can be written by someone who's none of these people.)

Since then, it's been realized that a character doesn't need to be a self-insert to be a Mary Sue, but it helps. Everyone has their own criteria for what makes one, but the big three traits are:
#They are super-powerful/hyper-competent. In established settings, usually more so than canon characters. Better leadership skills than a McDohl, faster than Sonic, etc.
#The story completely revolves around them, even in... no, ESPECIALLY in established settings.
#They can do no wrong. Everyone loves the Mary Sue and defends them even against perfectly reasonable concerns, invariably demonizing people that make these concerns.

Bonus points:
#The Mary Sue's competence doesn't match the creator's knowledge, leading to things like "The greatest Scorpion Clan shinobi EVAR" walking around in broad daylight in stereotypical ninja gear.
#The Mary Sue is a hypocritical monster and the creator is totally blind to this fact.
#Other characters comment on how much better at their own skills the Mary Sue is like they're happy for her, even if the character is known for being arrogant and standoff-ish.
#Characters that don't react well to the Sue's 'harmless pranks' see the light and begin to love the Mary Sue as well.
#Those that don't turn out to be evil spies or something.

A lot of traits (e.g. too-long-names and heterochrome eyes) are assumed to be signs of Mary Sues, but in themselves don't make a character one. This is because the "But I'm '''''Specul'''''" features are more a symptom than a cause, and all of them can be used in a non-Sueish manner (for example, a character with a twenty-part name is meant by the author to be taken as overly pretentious, and is reacted to in-universe as such).
 

=="I Hate This Competent Character"-Syndrome==
Believe it or not, of the vast majority of characters called Mary Sues or Gary Stues in fandoms, only a small handful will actually qualify as a true Mary Sue. Remember, one of the defining traits of Mary Sue is in their relation to the author; either the author sees them as herself/himself, or views them as fap or schlick material (or worse, [[waifu]] material). As a general rule: If the character makes a mistake, and it's clear that '''the author''' understands that the decision is a mistake, then they're probably not fully a Mary Sue.

The rest are what could be called "I Hate This Competent Character"-syndrome. This happens when a character, usually in the spotlight (so not the background character that has no bearing on the story), is widely disliked by a large part of a fandom, but with no tangible thing to latch that hate unto. What happens is that the character gets called a Mary Sue for being too competent, but this accusation has some issues of its own. One, as we've seen in this page, a true Mary Sue is a self-insert (and if the character is a super-naturally competent self-insert; yep that's most likely a Mary Sue), and a competent character need not be.

Second, in all the fiction we so love, like [[Setting Aesthetics|fantasy, sci-fi and all the rest]], main and side characters are ''ridiculously'' competent, sometimes as a byproduct of what kind of setting it is. That is why settings like [[A Song of Ice and Fire]] is notable for deconstructing competence, showing that a sword in hand does not a hero make - but that's a '' deconstruction.'' In most settings, heroes just are competent; the real sense of adversity and challenge usually comes from something else, like emotional struggles, political or societal issues and other faults. Even if there's a plotpoint about a hero being too weak to beat their enemy in one-to-one combat, chances are the main feature of that story arch is how the hero ''feels'' about it, rather than the struggle itself. Yeah sure, our hero learns the cool "I Win" technique, but that's not the important part; the important part is what kept them from learning it in the first place. Is it too dangerous? Did they damage themselves or friends with it once? Does it take them too close to the enemy they hate? And so on.

Let's take a classic, Superman. Superman is hyper-over-the-top-super competent, being so strong, resilient and fast that no one can stand up to him - but it works, because his challenges lies in how he utilizes that power, and how he relates to a mostly muggle world. So the character isn't a Mary Sue - but if you do not like Superman, maybe you wanna latch unto something to hate on... And that is likely this competence.

It's especially notable in settings where characters are automatically assumed to be competent if they are a main character. Examples like [[Star Wars]], [[Bioware|Mass Effect]], [[Dungeons and Dragons]] (depending on the whims of the GM), [[Lord of the Rings]] and other magical settings are filled with characters who are just competent by being a hero.

Good examples of "I Hate This Competent Character"-syndrome are characters like James Bond, [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Jon Snow]], [[Eldrad]], [[World of Warcraft|Thrall]], [[Batman]], and Rick Sanchez; all main-ish characters who are competent and may be dislikable for various different reasons... And if you dislike or even hate some of these characters? ''That's totally fucking fine.'' But make sure to actually use your ding dang words rather than hop on the bandwagon and use a term that doesn't mean what you think it does.

We all love and hate different characters, that's called taste. But competence, even relatively unexplained competence, is not a marker that indicates Mary Suedom.

===Bad Writer (Sub-)Syndrome===

A further note to the above: There are a non-trivial number of these type of characters who pass through the hands of a lot of writers; in this case, they can be Sues, '''but only when in the hands of unskilled writers'''. A bad writer will focus on the awesome, not on the structure and contrast that support it.

For example, hypercompetent characters like Batman or The Doctor are usually only interesting in scenarios that ''actually call for'' that hypercompetence. In that case, if the audience can see the solution a mile away, or can see an obviously better solution to the situation, the result is usually not as "awesome" as the author desires--unless the point is to demonstrate the flaws of the character, in which case, we're still moving away from "awesome", but ''intentionally'' this time.

If this is happening, just relax, and let the Dork Age pass, hoping that the next writer will actually be competent.

== Mary Sues in Roleplaying Games ==
It is important to realize that when playing an RPG, either as a player or as a DM, the standards for "unacceptable Mary Sue" change dramatically. Unlike if you are writing a novel, you are not the sole author of the story, nor are you the only main character. Thus certain traits that are completely fine for a character in a novel become things to avoid when making a character (NPC or PC) in an RPG. A good example of this would be Harry Potter. As the main character in a series of novels, making him the Chosen One is perfectly fine, because the story literally revolves around him, and the reader is meant to identify with him. If someone where to make Harry Potter in an RPG, it could easily become a problem, since him being "The Chosen One" by definition overshadows everyone else's characters. That is not to say that it should ''never'' be done, but it is something that should be discussed and agreed upon by the entire group beforehand. The reverse can also be true: what makes for a good RPG character does not always make for a good character in a novel (or, more accurately, ''unless well written'', certain traits common in RPG characters do not always make for a good character in a novel.) This is even more important when you are the DM; the players are the main characters, not the NPCs, and trying to pretend otherwise (usually via DMPCs) is one of the quickest ways to ruin a campaign.

For our purposes, we at 1d4chan try to keep our focus more on the tropes related to Suedom, and specific examples (usually Warhammer related). If you have a story of a specific Sue-abusing player or DM, there's probably a thread in [https://boards.4channel.org/tg/ the obvious place]. Go bore us there (where we can ignore you) instead of boring us here (where we'll need to revert you).

==Negating the Mary Sue==
Interestingly, there hasn't been really much written about how to defeat a May Sue aside from trolling, but we may identify a few ways to deal with Mary Sues and even Canon Sues:
*The first one, and quite accessible is character development, while this implies a risk of expanding the infection it is possible to remove a Sue status with a good writer either making fanfiction or a spin-off where the Mary Sue is changed for the better. Examples of this has been seen in long-existent characters which, due to good writing, become more down to earth, with the added bonus of annoying fans of the Sue period of time to no end. After all, one fanfic denies another.
*The second one is retcon, as the easiest way to annihilate a Mary Sue is to achieve the general consensus that it never happened. This is harder of course, as it requires the creators recognizing they made the wrong decisions or at least conceding to the fans. It can happen, but it can only be through official involvement, which requires a lot of fan reaction to happen.
*Third, have them operate in something resembling the real world; their impossible perfectness is treated as impossible by the people within the setting, and their actions have unforeseen consequences. (See, for reference, good quality [[Superman]] and [[Batman]] stories that don't focus on making either character more "human". Or the two protagonists from One-Punch Man, who are very much overpowered, but the focus of the series is a comedy based on ''how little satisfaction'' they find ''due to their overpoweredness''. The comic book Irredeemable is another good example, as the Plutonian comes across as a deconstruction of this character, showing how he uses his powers like an immature man-child and wipes out an entire country all because the entire world doesn't love him completely and adore him, demonstrating how much of a dick he is.)
*Finally, when it comes to reality, badly written characters end falling by their own weight. This is the reason no one remembers most of the overpowered characters added in fanfiction.net while everyone remembers cool, well-molded characters - after all, reality ensues.

Note that like overpoweredness, Mary Suedom is relative to the context of the work. Much like how if in a game everybody is overpowered, nobody actually is; if you are describing everyone in a setting as a Mary Sue, more than likely you're just in a "cast of snowflakes" setting, like superhero comics or transformers. Here, everyone of import is super amazing and special with a lot of weight put on their decisions and actions. (Exception: If one side of the conflict has a monopoly on both awesome and author-intended-sympathy, the "Sue" accusation starts becoming more relevant again.)

[[Troll|Or maybe you're just a dumbass flinging around buzzwords at things you don't like.]]

==Hard Men Making Hard Decisions (While Hard)==

A side note: A specific kind of male version of Mary Sue is also well known. He is usually described as a "Hard Man making Hard Decisions", but works using that description are usually sufficiently closer to "porn logic" than actual human logic that it's usually called "Wank material". (Note that "Hard Women making Hard Decisions" is also very much a thing, but tends to be less common for various reasons.)

Note that not all "Gary"/"Marty Stu"s are Hard Men Making Hard Decisions (While Hard); there exist Stus who are diplomatic or are idealistic but no less annoying. It's just that HMMHD(WH) are the subset that's the most predictable (and thus describable); other equally common types are the kind who makes all female characters want to sleep with him, or otherwise just gender-swapped versions of other Mary Sue archetypes.

=Gallery=
<gallery>
Image:Bloody_Mary_Sues.jpg|Get rid of them before they lay eggs.
File:Marysue_1517.jpg|Another way to bring Marvel and DC together again.
Image:Avatar shoopface by vfalconi.jpg|How it works.
File:Sparklypoo.jpg|What happens when Mary Sues meet each other.
File:Ma-Rey-Sue.jpg|The queen of Skub, thanks to the SJWs and vocal Red Pill advocates involved. Both sides are wrong and stupid in different ways.
File:Ultramarine-altair-mary-sue.jpg|Seems this clone actually worked, funnily enough, Altair, the stomped girl, was accused of being such a villain sue the protagonists literally had to rewrite reality to get rid of her, and only because she consented.
</gallery>

=See Also=
[[List of Mary Sues]] WARNING: [[Skub|Opinions]]

=External Links=
*[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue TVTropes' article on Mary Sues], that discusses the phenomenon and its many forms in detail.
*[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/1379217 sup/tg/ archive] of a hilarious thread with ultimate Mary Sue and PURE ENERGY in it.
*[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/1383654 sup/tg/ archive] of the Ultimate Mary Sue thread continued.
*[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/13722924/ sup/tg/ archive]; [[ITT]], the most grimdark setting ever conceived.
*[http://www.big-metto.net/RP_Wiki/index.php?title=Mirabelle_Armitage Mirabelle Armitage, D&D Mary Sure beyond Drizzt.]
*[http://www.ongoingworlds.com/blog/2011/04/the-many-different-types-of-mary-sue/ The many different types of Mary Sue]

=Footnotes=

Mary Sue

2020-09-20T17:31:19Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:B0FF:62CA:C5D1:828A: /* How Can I Tell If My Character Is A Mary Sue? */

[[Category:Mary Sue]]
{{Plot Armour}}
{{HurfDurf}}

[[Image:Marysuetest.jpg|500px|thumb|right|The perfectly sound and entirely reasonable logic of [[Internet Troll|many well-respected and completely honest critics]].]]

Overall, a '''Mary Sue''' is a character that is shamelessly self-inserted, fawned over by the canon characters, poorly developed, without flaws, and/or stupidly overpowered, who the story focuses on at the expense of the actual regular main characters. [[/tg/]] hates [[:Category:Mary Sue|Mary Sues]].

Unfortunately, after so much [[rage]] and so many [[troll]] threads, /tg/'s definition of Mary Sue has become blurred to the point that any character at all can be (and probably has been) accused of being a Mary Sue on even the flimsiest of pretenses.

Some accept nothing less than the above description, and will sooner gut you then look twice if you say it's anything else. Others prefer a more generalized definition, which refers to an overly-idealized character who exerts an unjust amount of influence upon their respective setting or story. Others still carry this meaning out to extremes and use the term to describe anyone who isn't a homeless junkie or a brooding sociopath with an alignment of Chaotic Batshit Insane. While another definition put forward by YouTuber Literature Devil in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcXVGIi1m28 this video] is that A Mary Sue is a character for which the laws of the universe bend to justify the actions of the Mary Sue. Especially when the universe bending over backwards leads to contradictions which will rightly piss most people off.

However, there is a conundrum regarding the definition. If the character is overpowered, idealized and part of an established story (such as some portrayals of Wolverine and Batman), some say that this is not a Mary Sue, as they are a canon character in an original story. For them, the term "Canon Sue" is used. The only difference between a Mary Sue and a Canon Sue (I'd like to take the time to apologize to any real-life people named "Sue" who are reading this) is a Canon Sue is an established character in the story/wish-fulfillment for the creator of the story (NOTE: few people will admit if the fictional character they create is for wish-fulfillment). For the sake of this page, the definition of Mary Sue will also include Canon Sues.

Another problem is when people use the term "Mary Sue" to refer to a "creator's pet"; a character that part of the fanbase dislikes but is adored by the creator of the character and gets treatment such as increasing focus, magnifying the importance of their role, and having the other characters talk about how awesome they are in painful ignorance — or sometimes in spite — of the fans' obvious hatred. This is not a Mary Sue though a character can be both; the two types share common traits and a Creator's Pet is more easily defined. For example; [[Marneus Calgar]] is a creator's pet, while one character who is a Mary Sues and a creator's pet is Wesley Crusher from Star Trek.

It is worth noting, however, that very rarely, authors have the skill to pull off the Mary Sue, creating a character of such epic awesomeness (e.g. [[Star Trek|Jean Luc Picard]]) that no one gives a shit.

Before you ask: Male versions of Mary Sue (and there are plenty) are known as Gary Stu or Marty Stu (both work, with usage depending on whether you prefer it to share initials or to rhyme), although for the purposes of sanity, we'll default to "Mary Sue" when referring to them.

==So, what's this "Mary Sue" thing got to do with /tg/?==

In short: [[NPC|GMPCs]], [[Elminster]]-types, [[Matt Ward]]-types, and [[Elf]]aboos.

# GMPCs have their own section in our [[NPC]] article, so we'll direct you there.
# Settings have a tendency to grow Sue-level characters if they have a sufficient number of high-powered NPCs. This is because an author needs ''somebody'' to impose some stability to the setting, and so you usually wind up needing a character that has many traits of the Mary Sue. And from there, it only takes a few writing mistakes to go into Mary Sue territory head first. ([[Elminster]] is a notable example here, but plenty of others exist.)
# Certain authors (and any setting with many authors will probably eventually find themselves with at least one of these) want to include Perfect Heroes or Perfect Villains in their settings. The problem with Perfect Heroes is that they tend to be just one or two steps from Mary Suedom, and these authors are usually bad enough writers that the resulting "Hero" goes veering off into Suedom like a plane that loses both wings goes veering off into the ground. (Matt Ward is merely the most /tg/ notable example here; more and worse examples exist, ''trust us''.)
#* A somewhat common subspecies of 3 is the "[[Waifu]]" Sue author. He wants to create his perfect Waifu, and the result is usually among the Suiest Sues Who Ever Sued. (Husbando-perpetrating female authors exist, as do gay and lesbian authors who do it for the appropriate sex, but Waifuing male authors are the most common subset to get called out, for various subtly obvious reasons.)
# When imagining a species or race, some authors lose sight of the concepts of competitive balance and competitive advantage and make one race superior to all the others, forgetting that the rule in good storytelling is [[Sanderson's laws|that flaws and limitations are more interesting than powers]]. <ref>For example, any given Superman (the character, not the book) story is not that interesting unless you either introduce an equal (or more powerful) and opposite threat (such as General Zod or Darkseid), or lean heavily on either his morality, secret identity, or kryptonite, all of which act as constraints on his power.</ref> The most common race to get this treatment are [[Elf]]s, but [[Chakat|other examples exist]].
#*Humanity gets both ends of this frequently: Depending on the bad writer in question, we can either be [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|the best thing ever]], or utter shit compared to their perfect Mai Waifu Master Race.

(Points 2 and 3 overlap, but are distinct enough in cause that they're worth separating.)

==Origin of the Concept==
The name "Mary Sue" comes from a parody of shitty [[Star Trek]] fanfiction called [http://www.wiccananime.com/amslt/amslttrekkiestale ''A Trekkie's Tale''] (no, seriously, that's the origin, look it up if you don't believe me.) First written in [[Old School Roleplaying|1974]] by Paula Smith, the original Lieutenant Mary Sue was a parody of the half-Vulcan jailbait and other shameless self-inserts that had been clogging up the Star Trek fanfic magazines. The trolling was so epic that her name became permanently ingrained in the vocabulary of every fandom on the planet, and this makes Paula Smith a paragon of trolls.

The term is commonly used by [[troll]]s, and can most easily be spotted by a blanket accusation of a character being a Sue without attempting to justify actual reasons behind it. More clever trolls will attempt to offer some explanation that is deliberately intended to get under the offended party's skin.

==A Few Special Cases of Sues==
Here are a few complicating factors in any simple definition of what "Mary Sue" means, because critics are mean like that:

===Male Sues===
First and foremost: A Mary Sue, as stated above, does not need to be a female, woman, or girl. There are plenty of male Sues, usually called "Gary Stu" or "Marty Stu". (See also the "Hard Man Making Hard Decisions (While Hard)" well below.)

===Villain Sues===
Note that the Mary Sue need not be the hero of the piece. A large minority of Sues are villains (either protagonist or antagonist).

Some well-known characters with a tendency in the hands of bad writers to become Villain Sues include [[Batman | The Joker]], Magneto, Doctor Doom, and [[Star Wars | Admiral Thrawn]]. And then there's the flat-out Villain Sues in a single writer's (or at least well regulated and coordinated between several) canon, such as Red Hulk's initial appearances, or the show version of Ramsay Bolton. Or, to be more directly /tg/ relevant, [[Fabius Bile]] and [[World of Darkness | Samuel Haight]]. [[Chaos]], especially with how it's been portrayed in the last several years, often gets called a faction of Villain Sues.

===Sue Species And Orders===
Further, it's possible for the Sueness to be spread across an entire species or other group of people. The accusation is more commonly (and more properly) thrown around on the species side of that line (Internalized Fantastic Racism be a Real World thing, yo). The best-known cases of species-wide-Suedom are probably [[Chakats]] and any given [[Elf]]aboos' version of Elves. The best known case of a Sue Organization or Order are the [[Ultramarines|Ultrasmurfs]].

===The AntiSue and Sympathy Sue===
You'd think that the opposite of a Mary Sue wouldn't be a kind of Mary Sue all its own? Well, you'd be wrong. Comes in two flavors:

* The perpetrator of the Sue might think "I'll just pull a George Costanza, and do the opposite of my instincts!", not recognizing that what made their instincts bad was more in amplitude than in direction. There are two subflavors of this:
** Characters who are Just The Worst in some way (ugly/stupid/unpopular/what-have-you), but is still recognizably a Sue (see, for reference, the worse Neelix episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, or Bella Swan from [[Twilight]])
** There's also the "Butt Monkey" type, where the character is essentially just a Mary Sue in full reverse; there's the same "the plot entirely revolves around the main character" problem, the same "that makes no sense" and "things that only happened because the Author said so" plots, the same "there must be mind control involved" character reactions, just set to negative instead of positive. This version's inclusion in Suedom is rather more controversial, as so much is mirrored that it's hard to differentiate the "real Sues" from just "the author's chew toy". The result is still bad writing; it's just that there is some debate about whether it counts as "Mary Sue Bad Writing" or just "Bad Writing".<ref>To repeat the message of this entire collection of Sue types: The definition of "Mary Sue" can be rather slippery, even when ignoring internet trolls.</ref>
* The perpetrator of the Sue is going for Sympathy. Which, again, is only a change in direction, not in amplitude.

The "Butt Monkey" case results in an extremely noticeable character archetype that is not usually called a Mary Sue, but is just as annoying: the one guy who is theoretically on the side of the heroes, but is useless, wrong about everything, an asshole, and generally disliked by the rest of the heroes, and who spends all of his or her time complaining or offering obviously stupid ideas. Remember Eric the Cavalier from the 1980s D&D cartoon? How about Nathan Ramsey from Seven Days? The Grand Vizier from War Planets? The magical ragdoll character "One" from the movie "9"? Avoid writing characters like this. Please.

===The Comedy Sue===
This is where a Character is a Sue and they are utterly perfect, but the audience is not supposed to be in awe of how good they are, we are supposed to laugh at the ridiculousness of it.

This kind of Sue can actually work; for examples, see the anime "Haven't You Heard I'm Sakamoto" and to a lesser extent "One Punch Man" or even Popeye at times for examples of this kind of Sue. They never fail, but we're suppose to laugh at them doing it.

The methods used for this humor range from deconstructive parodies (e.g. "We've needed a new house here at Hogwarts to accommodate all the...special girls, so welcome to House Sparklypoo!") to straight deconstruction (Take One Punch Man's Caped Baldy: instead of people fawning over him, nobody believes his feats and call him a fraud, while he's also constantly frustrated by the lack of a good challenge) to anti-climax (God-Man, pictured below in this article) to the whole thing being a mere joke delivery system (classic Bugs Bunny or Popeye cartoons).

'''''However''''', in order for this to work you need your tongue so far up your cheek it's basically bored out through the other sides, and you actually need ''''' talent. ''''' And the talent part applies even when the character exists solely for joke delivery (and thus requires no characterization beyond a couple of basic traits).

===Mary Suetopia===
For that extra bit of mind screw: There are cases of the "Mary Sue" accusation being thrown, with some justice, at entire ''civilizations''. [[TVTropes]] calls this particular variant "Mary Suetopia". Just about any Utopian work, and many a Dystopian work (*cough*Draka*cough*) can have this accusation thrown at them; commonly comes in three subspecies:

# Pure Preaching. Not just religious, but, in the story, any ideology that the author thinks knows The One True Path To (Happiness/Truth/God/Prosperity/etc.). Usually the most Sueish of the lot.
# Stories about or involving the Fall of such a civilization (sometimes incidentally; see, for example, many interpretations of [[Superman|Krypton]], where the only important part about the place is that it blew up after sending one last ship out to Earth), or about the conflict between two civilizations, one of whom is theoretically "better" than the other (e.g., some of the Culture books, or, on the flip side, [[Orks]] vs. just about anybody else). Can be Sueish, but can also avoid it, depending on the focus, nature, and quality of the work.
# Social Satire/Commentary. Here, the point of the work was less on how perfect this civilization is, and more on using it to comment on the culture in which it was written, or the state of the world at the time. Think 1984, Gulliver's Travels, Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, the original ''Utopia'', and so on. Can be the least Sueish of the three, depending on writing quality.

(As a side note, this version of Suedom is particularly /tg/ relevant; each version of Warhammer alone has vast amounts of the latter two (although admittedly in a usually fairly non-Sueish way), and there are too many cases of the first case in Science Fiction settings.)

==Watsonian vs. Doylist definition of "Sue"==

A futher complicating factor in any definition of "Mary Sue" is the Watsonian vs. Doylist definition problem.

For the unfamiliar, criticism sometimes differentiate between a "Watsonian", or "in-universe based" explanation of something (e.g., "Superpowerman got beaten by Evilvillianman because he had the flu!") and a "Doylist", or "author-centered" explanation (e.g., "Superpowerman got beaten by Evilvillianman because the rest of the story doesn't work if Superpowerman wins that fight.") "Watsonian" and "Doylist" are named for the fictional and real life authors of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Dr. John Watson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle respectively. Holmes fans being really creepily fond of coming up with Watsonian explanations for plot holes probably helps.

How does this relate to Mary Sue definitions? Well, the two common ways of describing a Sue are Watsonian, where being Overpowered and Always Right is the relevant problem, and the Doylist definition, where the relationship of the author to the character is the relevant problem. We employ a mixture of the two, because guessing what the author was thinking can get very unreliable very quickly and even when they're questioned about this authors - like any other people - can be blind to their biases or lie. Regardless, the purely power-and-rightness-based definition can easily start returning false results if context and sanity are not considered.

==How Can I Tell If My Character Is A Mary Sue?==
Each "Yes" answer gives your character a piece of Mary Sueness.
[[File:God-Man.gif|thumb|300px|right|God-Man, providing a particularly extreme example (albeit a parody)]]
* Does their personal morality always perfectly match objective reality? To put it another way, is there no difference between describing their opinion and simply narrating what was actually going on in a scene?
* Do they start the story at the pinnacle of achievement and have no way to grow or improve?
** Or do their new skills and abilities come from your ass at just the time they need them?
* Do they have unexplained frequent good luck, even when by all logic they should fail in that area?
* Is it a fan character that is better than the canon characters? (As in, "more powerful and gets all the attention", not "better written". If it's the latter, all the power to you.)
* Do they have physical features, powers or items that are impossible to have or extremely rare going by the rules of the setting (ie; a human with cat eyes and wings with no explanation in real-world based fiction, or a ridiculous item such as a weapon which is [[Noise Marines|chainsaw, electric-guitar and machine-gun combined]] in a swords-and-sorcery setting)?
* Do they have the most powerful ability or power in a setting, without any sacrifices? (For example, a character that can use magic which would destroy any enemy, without any negative effects. But if a character has that ability, and it reduces his lifespan, damages him forever and/or kills everyone including his comrades, it's not ''that'' overpowered.)
* Are they connected to the canon characters or do they become connected to them? This usually takes the form of being a "long-lost" relative or love interest to a canon character.
* Do they get a lot of shilling? For example; do all the canon characters suddenly start talking about a fan character, with their presence in the story largely relegated to providing opportunities for the new character to show how pure, powerful, good-hearted, etc they are?
* Do you never allow other characters to dislike them?
** [[Eragon|Or do you punish those other characters for disliking your character by portraying them negatively and/or making something terrible happen to them]]? (For example; making them unlikable, a secondary villain, or having the one character that dislikes the Mary Sue "coincidentally" have their home destroyed)
* Are they someone's self-proclaimed [[furry|fursona]]? (If so, stop reading this list and burn them for [[heresy]]).
** The Sonichu exception: If the author is making fun of ''somebody else's'' fursona, and isn't a furry themselves, everything is perfectly fine, at least as far as Mary Suedom is concerned.
* Do they share the same beliefs as the writer and openly express them? (for example, the protagonists of stories by Ayn Rand, Gene Roddenberry or Jack Chick).
* Do they always make good decisions? And/or bad ones that are suddenly revealed to have been a good choice?
* Do you use absolutes like "always," "everybody," or "never" when describing their ''abilities''? (Those word being used to describe their ''behavior'' are usually okay, if slightly suspect (bad writers have an attraction to absolutes).)
* Do they feature an entirely contrived "weakness" that doesn't affect them any time it would harm them (such as being clumsy ''unless'' they are required to perform a great feat of athleticism) or isn't really a weakness (such as being too kind or righteous "for their own good") which was clearly added solely so the author could point to it when accused of writing a Sue?
* Is the main problem in the story one that this character can easily fix or solve on their own? (Doesn't count if they're the only character in the story).
*Do they have powers that no-one else has.
* Is it a protagonist character written by Matt Ward, Kim Dal Young, Stephenie Mayer, Karen Traviss, Onision, Ayn Rand or Terry <del>Good</del>Badkind? (Note, a Mary Sue can be written by someone who's none of these people.)

Since then, it's been realized that a character doesn't need to be a self-insert to be a Mary Sue, but it helps. Everyone has their own criteria for what makes one, but the big three traits are:
#They are super-powerful/hyper-competent. In established settings, usually more so than canon characters. Better leadership skills than a McDohl, faster than Sonic, etc.
#The story completely revolves around them, even in... no, ESPECIALLY in established settings.
#They can do no wrong. Everyone loves the Mary Sue and defends them even against perfectly reasonable concerns, invariably demonizing people that make these concerns.

Bonus points:
#The Mary Sue's competence doesn't match the creator's knowledge, leading to things like "The greatest Scorpion Clan shinobi EVAR" walking around in broad daylight in stereotypical ninja gear.
#The Mary Sue is a hypocritical monster and the creator is totally blind to this fact.
#Other characters comment on how much better at their own skills the Mary Sue is like they're happy for her, even if the character is known for being arrogant and standoff-ish.
#Characters that don't react well to the Sue's 'harmless pranks' see the light and begin to love the Mary Sue as well.
#Those that don't turn out to be evil spies or something.

A lot of traits (e.g. too-long-names and heterochrome eyes) are assumed to be signs of Mary Sues, but in themselves don't make a character one. This is because the "But I'm '''''Specul'''''" features are more a symptom than a cause, and all of them can be used in a non-Sueish manner (for example, a character with a twenty-part name is meant by the author to be taken as overly pretentious, and is reacted to in-universe as such).
 

=="I Hate This Competent Character"-Syndrome==
Believe it or not, of the vast majority of characters called Mary Sues or Gary Stues in fandoms, only a small handful will actually qualify as a true Mary Sue. Remember, one of the defining traits of Mary Sue is in their relation to the author; either the author sees them as herself/himself, or views them as fap or schlick material (or worse, [[waifu]] material). As a general rule: If the character makes a mistake, and it's clear that '''the author''' understands that the decision is a mistake, then they're probably not fully a Mary Sue.

The rest are what could be called "I Hate This Competent Character"-syndrome. This happens when a character, usually in the spotlight (so not the background character that has no bearing on the story), is widely disliked by a large part of a fandom, but with no tangible thing to latch that hate unto. What happens is that the character gets called a Mary Sue for being too competent, but this accusation has some issues of its own. One, as we've seen in this page, a true Mary Sue is a self-insert (and if the character is a super-naturally competent self-insert; yep that's most likely a Mary Sue), and a competent character need not be.

Second, in all the fiction we so love, like [[Setting Aesthetics|fantasy, sci-fi and all the rest]], main and side characters are ''ridiculously'' competent, sometimes as a byproduct of what kind of setting it is. That is why settings like [[A Song of Ice and Fire]] is notable for deconstructing competence, showing that a sword in hand does not a hero make - but that's a '' deconstruction.'' In most settings, heroes just are competent; the real sense of adversity and challenge usually comes from something else, like emotional struggles, political or societal issues and other faults. Even if there's a plotpoint about a hero being too weak to beat their enemy in one-to-one combat, chances are the main feature of that story arch is how the hero ''feels'' about it, rather than the struggle itself. Yeah sure, our hero learns the cool "I Win" technique, but that's not the important part; the important part is what kept them from learning it in the first place. Is it too dangerous? Did they damage themselves or friends with it once? Does it take them too close to the enemy they hate? And so on.

Let's take a classic, Superman. Superman is hyper-over-the-top-super competent, being so strong, resilient and fast that no one can stand up to him - but it works, because his challenges lies in how he utilizes that power, and how he relates to a mostly muggle world. So the character isn't a Mary Sue - but if you do not like Superman, maybe you wanna latch unto something to hate on... And that is likely this competence.

It's especially notable in settings where characters are automatically assumed to be competent if they are a main character. Examples like [[Star Wars]], [[Bioware|Mass Effect]], [[Dungeons and Dragons]] (depending on the whims of the GM), [[Lord of the Rings]] and other magical settings are filled with characters who are just competent by being a hero.

Good examples of "I Hate This Competent Character"-syndrome are characters like James Bond, [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Jon Snow]], [[Eldrad]], [[World of Warcraft|Thrall]], [[Batman]], and Rick Sanchez; all main-ish characters who are competent and may be dislikable for various different reasons... And if you dislike or even hate some of these characters? ''That's totally fucking fine.'' But make sure to actually use your ding dang words rather than hop on the bandwagon and use a term that doesn't mean what you think it does.

We all love and hate different characters, that's called taste. But competence, even relatively unexplained competence, is not a marker that indicates Mary Suedom.

===Bad Writer (Sub-)Syndrome===

A further note to the above: There are a non-trivial number of these type of characters who pass through the hands of a lot of writers; in this case, they can be Sues, '''but only when in the hands of unskilled writers'''. A bad writer will focus on the awesome, not on the structure and contrast that support it.

For example, hypercompetent characters like Batman or The Doctor are usually only interesting in scenarios that ''actually call for'' that hypercompetence. In that case, if the audience can see the solution a mile away, or can see an obviously better solution to the situation, the result is usually not as "awesome" as the author desires--unless the point is to demonstrate the flaws of the character, in which case, we're still moving away from "awesome", but ''intentionally'' this time.

If this is happening, just relax, and let the Dork Age pass, hoping that the next writer will actually be competent.

== Mary Sues in Roleplaying Games ==
It is important to realize that when playing an RPG, either as a player or as a DM, the standards for "unacceptable Mary Sue" change dramatically. Unlike if you are writing a novel, you are not the sole author of the story, nor are you the only main character. Thus certain traits that are completely fine for a character in a novel become things to avoid when making a character (NPC or PC) in an RPG. A good example of this would be Harry Potter. As the main character in a series of novels, making him the Chosen One is perfectly fine, because the story literally revolves around him, and the reader is meant to identify with him. If someone where to make Harry Potter in an RPG, it could easily become a problem, since him being "The Chosen One" by definition overshadows everyone else's characters. That is not to say that it should ''never'' be done, but it is something that should be discussed and agreed upon by the entire group beforehand. The reverse can also be true: what makes for a good RPG character does not always make for a good character in a novel (or, more accurately, ''unless well written'', certain traits common in RPG characters do not always make for a good character in a novel.) This is even more important when you are the DM; the players are the main characters, not the NPCs, and trying to pretend otherwise (usually via DMPCs) is one of the quickest ways to ruin a campaign.

For our purposes, we at 1d4chan try to keep our focus more on the tropes related to Suedom, and specific examples (usually Warhammer related). If you have a story of a specific Sue-abusing player or DM, there's probably a thread in [https://boards.4channel.org/tg/ the obvious place]. Go bore us there (where we can ignore you) instead of boring us here (where we'll need to revert you).

==Negating the Mary Sue==
Interestingly, there hasn't been really much written about how to defeat a May Sue aside from trolling, but we may identify a few ways to deal with Mary Sues and even Canon Sues:
*The first one, and quite accessible is character development, while this implies a risk of expanding the infection it is possible to remove a Sue status with a good writer either making fanfiction or a spin-off where the Mary Sue is changed for the better. Examples of this has been seen in long-existent characters which, due to good writing, become more down to earth, with the added bonus of annoying fans of the Sue period of time to no end. After all, one fanfic denies another.
*The second one is retcon, as the easiest way to annihilate a Mary Sue is to achieve the general consensus that it never happened. This is harder of course, as it requires the creators recognizing they made the wrong decisions or at least conceding to the fans. It can happen, but it can only be through official involvement, which requires a lot of fan reaction to happen.
*Third, have them operate in something resembling the real world; their impossible perfectness is treated as impossible by the people within the setting, and their actions have unforeseen consequences. (See, for reference, good quality [[Superman]] and [[Batman]] stories that don't focus on making either character more "human". Or the two protagonists from One-Punch Man, who are very much overpowered, but the focus of the series is a comedy based on ''how little satisfaction'' they find ''due to their overpoweredness''. The comic book Irredeemable is another good example, as the Plutonian comes across as a deconstruction of this character, showing how he uses his powers like an immature man-child and wipes out an entire country all because the entire world doesn't love him completely and adore him, demonstrating how much of a dick he is.)
*Finally, when it comes to reality, badly written characters end falling by their own weight. This is the reason no one remembers most of the overpowered characters added in fanfiction.net while everyone remembers cool, well-molded characters - after all, reality ensues.

Note that like overpoweredness, Mary Suedom is relative to the context of the work. Much like how if in a game everybody is overpowered, nobody actually is; if you are describing everyone in a setting as a Mary Sue, more than likely you're just in a "cast of snowflakes" setting, like superhero comics or transformers. Here, everyone of import is super amazing and special with a lot of weight put on their decisions and actions. (Exception: If one side of the conflict has a monopoly on both awesome and author-intended-sympathy, the "Sue" accusation starts becoming more relevant again.)

[[Troll|Or maybe you're just a dumbass flinging around buzzwords at things you don't like.]]

==Hard Men Making Hard Decisions (While Hard)==

A side note: A specific kind of male version of Mary Sue is also well known. He is usually described as a "Hard Man making Hard Decisions", but works using that description are usually sufficiently closer to "porn logic" than actual human logic that it's usually called "Wank material". (Note that "Hard Women making Hard Decisions" is also very much a thing, but tends to be less common for various reasons.)

Note that not all "Gary"/"Marty Stu"s are Hard Men Making Hard Decisions (While Hard); there exist Stus who are diplomatic or are idealistic but no less annoying. It's just that HMMHD(WH) are the subset that's the most predictable (and thus describable); other equally common types are the kind who makes all female characters want to sleep with him, or otherwise just gender-swapped versions of other Mary Sue archetypes.

=Gallery=
<gallery>
Image:Bloody_Mary_Sues.jpg|Get rid of them before they lay eggs.
File:Marysue_1517.jpg|Another way to bring Marvel and DC together again.
Image:Avatar shoopface by vfalconi.jpg|How it works.
File:Sparklypoo.jpg|What happens when Mary Sues meet each other.
File:Ma-Rey-Sue.jpg|The queen of Skub, thanks to the SJWs and vocal Red Pill advocates involved. Both sides are wrong and stupid in different ways.
File:Ultramarine-altair-mary-sue.jpg|Seems this clone actually worked, funnily enough, Altair, the stomped girl, was accused of being such a villain sue the protagonists literally had to rewrite reality to get rid of her, and only because she consented.
</gallery>

=See Also=
[[List of Mary Sues]] WARNING: [[Skub|Opinions]]

=External Links=
*[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue TVTropes' article on Mary Sues], that discusses the phenomenon and its many forms in detail.
*[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/1379217 sup/tg/ archive] of a hilarious thread with ultimate Mary Sue and PURE ENERGY in it.
*[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/1383654 sup/tg/ archive] of the Ultimate Mary Sue thread continued.
*[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/13722924/ sup/tg/ archive]; [[ITT]], the most grimdark setting ever conceived.
*[http://www.big-metto.net/RP_Wiki/index.php?title=Mirabelle_Armitage Mirabelle Armitage, D&D Mary Sure beyond Drizzt.]
*[http://www.ongoingworlds.com/blog/2011/04/the-many-different-types-of-mary-sue/ The many different types of Mary Sue]

=Footnotes=

Drider

2020-09-20T16:22:51Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:B0FF:62CA:C5D1:828A: /* Monstergirls */

[[File:Pale Drider.png|300px|thumb|right|Fun fact: originally, driders were supposed to turn pale white as part of the transformation, perhaps to mimic a freshly molted spider?]]
'''Driders''' are a creature that originated in the [[Forgotten Realms]] of [[Dungeons & Dragons]]. They are basically [[centaurs]], but replace "human half" with "[[drow]] [[elf]] half" and "horse body" with "giant spider body". Basically, the batshit crazy [[Lolth]] has a history of transforming her followers into half-spider monsters for shits 'n' giggles.

In the original lore, transformation into a Drider was supposed to be a punishment for those drow who failed one of [[Lolth]]'s various psycho-tests or for a male who pissed off a high priestess so bad murderraping him to death wasn't punishment enough. [[Wat|It doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense]] considering that [[Lolth]] herself is basically half-drow and half-spider in her favorite avatar-form, that she considers spiders sacred (her original title was ''Demon Queen of Spiders'' for chrissakes) and Driders are actually ''more'' powerful in crunch than the drow they were made from. So when 4th edition came around, the fluff got changed to match the crunch and getting Drider'ed became a cherished reward for her most worthy followers instead. 5th edition went back to the old fluff, arguing that Lolth is batshit insane and that few if any of her actions makes sense at all.

[[Pathfinder]] made driders into the results of twisted mutative "[[fleshcrafting]]" done on failures with no divine connection at all. It also introduced a classic [[monstergirl]] sexual dimorphism; female driders look like sexy half-drow half-black widows, whilst male drow are hideous spider-faced half-tarantula brutes.

In Eberron, Drow instead worship the scorpion god Vulkoor, and thus have [[Awesome|drow/scorpion hybrids]] called [[Scorrow]].

==Monstergirls==
{{Monstergirls}}

Since the basic picture of a Drider is inevitably a sexy black-skinned elf-lady atop a giant spider, centaur-style, it should be no surprise that they have taken off as one of the more common forms of [[monstergirls]]. Non-explicitly D&D based ones tend to be called Arachnes, however, since, y'know, trademarks and Arachne being the woman who became the first spider in Greco-Roman myth and all. These monstergirls are often depicted as dominatrixes (if not outright vorarephiles, more on that later), particularly favoring bondage, since they can spin restraints out of their own silk - though there is an almost equally strong tendency to portray them as surprisingly timid and demure. Some actually invoke both, either by having the arachne possess a facade of shyness or demure mannerisms that gives way to domination in the bedroom, or by having them act assertive and domineering in public, but be shy and tender lovers in the privacy of the bedroom. Surprising if you look into actual spider behavior, it's not too far removed depending on the species. Some have elaborate 'dancing' such as with the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maratus_volans peacock spider] (watch it, it's pretty cute, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYIUFEQeh3g and quite memeable.]) others males 'pluck' the web of the female like a musical instrument to serenade (or to simply let her know that it isn't food that just walked into her web, depending on species). Others do 'cuddle' after reproduction, and there are at least a few species of spider that do the bondage thing and tie up their mating partner... although it is typically the male that ties the female down so he can have a chance to have his way with her without getting eaten by the much larger and stronger female (Yeah, Mother Nature is something of a /d/enizen like that at times...). Driders might also be into super hard core (i.e. mutilation) chastity play. In some species of spider males will mutilate the female after having sex so that potential rivals can't grab hold of the female to mate properly. In some other species, male spiders have been known to break off their dick to plug the reproductive organs of the female (this presumably also counts as CBT).

Oh, and while we're on the subject, the idea that the female spider eats the male as a post-nookie snack is only partly true. Most species of spider do have a documented cases of a female eating the male, but her actually doing so is the exception rather than the rule. What's more, different species have the female eat the male for different reasons, the above one being particular to black widows; females of other types might eat a male because she doesn't like his mating dance, for example. Since spider penises don't grow back, males that break their dick off tend to let themselves get eaten without resistance.

It's also surprisingly common for [[monstergirl]] Driders to [[/d/|parasitically lay eggs inside of humanoid hosts with an ovipositor]], [[Rule 34|especially through the vagoos of nubile human or elfin maidens]]. Precisely why, nobody freaking knows, especially since first, Driders are almost always depicted as sterile in D&D (Lolth might be crazy but she doesn't want to create a self-sustaining rival race to her beloved/hated Drow - she has the [[chitine]]s for that) and second, spiders just don't do that sort of shit in real life. Like, at all. Among arthropods that's mostly a wasp thing, [[Grimdark|the eggs are injected rather than fitted into a space, it's done with the idea that when the young hatch they feed by eating the recipient - '''alive or dead''' - from the inside out]] and the ironic thing is spiders are known for being at the receiving end of it; there is a reason why Tarantula Hawks have that name.

So all in all, a race of driders whose sexuality accurately reflects that of actual spiders would have the following characteristics:
* [[Vore]] would be the single most common paraphilia amongst them, but still a paraphilia.
* Being into bondage however would be the norm, and not at all a paraphilia for driders like it is for humans.
* Depending on the species of spider you want to draw from, the females could be aroused by things like Dancing or String Music (although this probably wouldn't help to curb the stereotype [[bard|bards]] have gained in 3e).
* Parasitic egg-laying would be the subject of primal (potentially even freudian) nightmares rather than anything they engage in as part of ''their'' reproduction.
** If you are such a hardcore /d/eviant that you absolutely ''must'' include this, then invent some sort of wasp monstergirl and make the driders the victims.

===MGE===
The [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]] has no fewer than 6 varieties of spider-based mamono:
* The '''Arachne''' is the common variant, and is basically a typical dominatrix spider-girl.
* The '''[[Hengeyokai|Jorogumo]]''' is a Zipangu variant who acts polite and demure during the day, but reverts to the same aggressive, sexually dominant behavior as her mainland cousin at night.
* The '''Ant Arachne''' is an arachne variant that has adapted to resemble the appearance of a Giant Ant mamono; these lazy bums infiltrate Giant Ant dens, where they freeload off of the food and captured men that the Ant-girls work so hard to provide. In case you're wondering, this is actually biologically accurate and there is a whole Taxonomy family of spider which mimic ants.
* The '''Ushi-oni''' is another Zipangu arachne; based upon a yokai that resembled a giant spider with an ox's head, it's essentially a [[minotaur]]-girl from the waist up and a giant tarantula from the waist down. They are amongst the most brutish and uncivilized of the Zipangu mamono, being essentially even more aggressive than minotaurs.
* The '''[[Girtablilu]]''' is essentially the [[Scorrow]] of the MGE world, taking its name from an actual scorpion-taur monster. It uses aphrodisiac venom to ensnare victims. If your wondering why Scorpions and Spider monster girls are in the same family, it's because Scorpions and spiders are in the same biological order: ''Arachnid''.
* The '''Atlach-nacha''' is a Mythosian mamono, and as such one of the freakiest; in its native form, it resembles a [[loli]] with spider legs growing out of her back, but she uses her magic to transform men into giant spider-like abominations, with a "head" that is basically an orifice full of sexual organs and aphrodisiac venom-injectors into which she slots herself to take up the traditional "tauric" appearance.

==Gallery==
<center>
<gallery>
File:Fireside Spinning Arachne.jpg
File:MGE Arachne.jpg
File:MGE Atlach-Nacha.jpg
File:MGE Ant Arachne.jpg
File:MGE Jorougumo.jpg
File:MGE Ushi-oni.jpg
</gallery>
</center>

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Monsters]][[Category: Monstergirls]]