Editing Mary Sue (section)

==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.)<ref>Don't get us started on [[Chakat|Hermaphrodite Sues]]</ref>

===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, Thanos, 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, the most standout and skubby character of which is probably [[Archaon]].

===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. It is possible to write incompetent goofballs without making them completely unlikable and no one is that dumb all the time unless they have a legitimate disability, in which case no reasonable person would expect them to take part in the important main mission. The sole exception to this are comedies in which case a total moron should be written to be funny and not as an annoying load that is actively detrimental to the plot. Develop your characters naturally.

===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 Saitama: instead of people fawning over him, nobody believes his feats since they're so completely ridiculous, so they 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).

===Moral Sue===
Sure, they're not invicible, super-strong, super-fast or have powers beyond reckoning. Neither are they beloved by everyone except the cartoonishly evil villains. But one thing is clear; they are ''constantly'' shown to be right about everything. Or at least put at such a pedestal when it comes to giving out life lessons that it becomes extremely annoying. Moral Sues are [[Skub|debatably]] a thing. Because of mostly two factors; for one, how does one actually declare a Moral Sue? Sure, a character could be always "presented" as right because of the choice of words or the mise-en-scène while they deliver their little speech, but on the greater scale of the medium they reside in, are they really right about the one thing they preach? Some characters may be entitled or very faithful to their ideology, but how much is it the author doing intellectual masturbation and preaching, and how much is it the character just acting the way they are? Perhaps in a near future, they might actually grow out of that mentality.

Another issue comes in the form of political bias. That is to say '''our''' political bias. What if a character is just right? What if we don't necesarily agree with what he or she says, but at least their argument or what they stand for makes sense and sounds actually understandable? This can happen. More often than not, accusations of character being Moral Sues stem from political disagreements online. With that being said, an actual Moral Sue would be presented as always right or standing correct at any given moment, with the added bonus of terrible or unsubtle writing to accompany them. Not only that, but their current situation or happenings within the confines of a story will prove them right at one point or another.

Probably the best way to prove a character is a Moral Sue? If readers/viewers who '''actually agree''' with the position ''still'' find the character intolerable for being too preachy (a situation TV Tropes calls "Don't Shoot The Message").

===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, since they're often little more than vehicles for an author to ham-fistedly preach their beliefs at you. (For some examples, see [[List of Mary Sues#Mary Suetopia]])
# 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.)