Editing Mary Sue (section)

==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. Essentially, HMMMHD is the [[Edgy]] masculine equivalent to the Pure Perfect Kind Beautiful Pure Princess stereotype. Nor are all hardened characters who make difficult decisions Stus; as mentioned above, it's all in how the author handles the character<ref>In particular, if either the decision is portrayed as actually weighing on the character after the fact, or its made clear that some fundamental assumption the Hard Man makes about the world is ''wrong'', the While Hard part of the description kinda [[Pun|looks flaccid]].</ref>.

Further, not all characters that can be called a "Hard Man Making Hard Decisions" are Stus; there are plenty of such characters who are either explicitly wrong about something fundamental (assuming an alien is hostile when there's an obvious innocent explanation, to name one obvious cliche), or whose decisions are shown to haunt them after the fact, neither of which are Sueish traits

For more about roughly this kind of character, see our article on [[Edgy]].