Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
Mary Sue is a highly pervasive character type that dogs most amateur writers. It's no doubt frustrating for people to pour their heart and soul into a story with an original character and get such negative response from everybody as they label their character a Mary Sue. But what is Mary Sue, after all? As they search the Internet for information, they find all sorts of lists of Common Mary Sue Traits.
Wait, you mean it's bad for the character to be a Friend To All Living Things? No problem! Animals DIE in her presence. It's bad for her to always be optimistic? No problem! She's now highly paranoid and has obsessive compulsive disorder to facilitate it. It's bad for her to have extraordinary abilities that allow her to do no wrong? No problem! She's now completely depowered, physically handicapped, and extremely incompetent. It's bad for her to be beautiful? No problem! She now looks like Janet Reno as painted by Picasso as a two-year old after someone mistook the painting for toilet paper. Surely, this fixed all the problems, right?
But wait, people still accuse her of being Mary Sue. It seems the other characters still treat her as being the most important thing in the world in spite of her anathemic personality, inability to do anything right, and ghastly visage. The plot still bends the universe to facilitate her. Why do they like someone like this? At least with the purple haired goddess, one could almost understand why they'd want to bask in her radiance. What horrible affront to nature have they inflicted upon the fanfiction universe?
Anyway, theatricality aside, this is basically when a character is a highly exaggerated This Loser Is You that still manages to have the plot bias of Mary Sue. The author methodically reverses all the Common Mary Sue Traits in a failed attempt to make the character someone the audience can relate to while missing the whole point. Even though it's such an abrasive, unattractive, and generally unremarkable character, the plot still seems to revolve around him/her and the other characters still act favorably to him/her. The traits commonly ascribed to Mary Sue may be gone, but they still exemplify the traits that makes Mary Sue so hated in the first place.
This character can best be summarized as an Anti Hero without the traits that make them work in the first place. Anti Heroes very often have mental illness, crippling phobias, and generally aren't very pleasant to be around, but they don't have ALL of them. They have good points, too - a sense of honour that they feel is crippling their job, a sense of humour that keeps them entertaining, a desire to redeem themselves for a terrible act in the past, a conscience that just won't shut up... What makes them interesting is in watching the long and arduous journey involved in overcoming their faults.
An Anti Sue has the bad points, but the writer has forgotten to give them any good points that would add depth to their character. There's no long journey to redeem oneself, no difficulty in changing their personality - the plot and other characters do all the leg work for them, giving us an abrasive character without the benefit of the hero's journey. This is a pretty good illustration of one of the beginning author's bigger failings; namely, the inability to distinguish "things that happen to the character" from " Character Development". The Mary Sue and especially the Anti Sue will have all manner of events layered into the story, hoping to make them legitimate characters, without considering the fact that they still have an exceedingly generic and often obnoxious personality regardless of what happened to them. Here's a hint: "Things happening to a character" is Exactly What It Says On The Tin. " Character Development" is how that first one affects the character and changes them.
This is probably the most hated type of Mary Sue. At least with the other types, their exaggeratedly positive character DNA means you can't so much hate them for their traits as you hate them for being too perfect. With this, you now have to deal with the very negative traits along with the plot bias that breaks Willing Suspension Of Disbelief. Think The Scrappy that pretty much never leaves the camera and you get an idea what it's like.
In brief, it feels like the author is just publicly crying about their low self-esteem.
See also Suetiful All Along and Action Survivor, which may or may not produce characters like this. Curiously enough, even though the vast majority of God Mode Sues are also Boring Invincible Heroes, most Anti Sues aren't Boring Failure Heroes; as many negative traits as Anti Sues accumulate, repeatedly losing doesn't tend to be one of them.
Fan Examples
- The City Of Heroes character Leah Carpenter
 , a (not so) Cute Monster Girl with an insipid backstory that serves as a failed Take That against Mary Sue (or, more accurately, Common Mary Sue Traits). She's incredibly loathsome, selfish, judgmental, and self-deprecating. She's also the Cosmic Plaything, with an exaggeratedly huge amount of tragedy in her life that a Sympathetic Sue only wishes she could have. Yet in spite of this, the plot still idolizes her and the whole thing reads out like a battle between two cosmic deities, one bent on destroying her and one bent on saving her. Her personality means next to nothing as she walks through the story. Not to mention that canon characters get derailed like nothing to facilitate the "plot"... and this happens to be a troper's Old Shame. It all seemed like a clever idea at the time.
- Danny Lilithborne is a troper on this site, but he's also the main character of a series of stories said troper wrote. He's the reincarnation of the son of Lilith, possesses the power of the archangel Gabriel, and has not only Lilith but a bevy of other women who love to sleep with him. You'd think he'd have a little confidence, but no. He spends the majority of the story moping about how he's only making himself happy and making his lovers depressed in the process. It's only when Lilith takes his memories that he gets over himself, but then he becomes a full-fledged Marty Stu, although he reverts back to Anti-Sue status in the next story.
- These character traits extend to the main character of his Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfiction Yu-Gi-Oh! Negative Zero, Shougo Aoyama; nevertheless, his depiction of Shougo as cowardly and passive-aggressive is not very different from how the character is depicted in Toei's movie, where the character comes from.
- My Immortal is infamous for this. It's main character, Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, is a depressive satanist, making her not a Mary Sue in the Author's eyes. However, satanism is treated as a good thing in the story, nobody even get's close to being sick of her constant wangsting, she's so beautiful it's a curse and she's the center of attention for every single character. Definitely not a Mary Sue.
Canon Examples:
Anime
Comic Books
- James Howlett/Logan/Wolverine in the X-Men franchise. It varies from source to source, but he is largely presented as a small, smelly, hairy drunkard with a tendency towards unnecessary violence who smokes like a chimney and spends way too much time going after barely legal women. When he turned out to be very popular, those Running The Asylum basically made him a Sue in recent years, giving him way too much screen time. This is more and more blatant ever since the movies, where he was pretty much a full-blooded Stu; his solo film is sometimes referred to as "the fourth Wolverine movie". Having Hugh Jackman cast in the role didn't help either, adding sheer physical attractiveness to Wolvy's already-established badassery...
- It's much much worse in Ultimate X-Men, where Wolverine had sex with Jean (repeatedly) in the fifth issue. To be fair, Ultimate Wolverine is kind of attractive, but given that Jean is about 19 at this point it can still leave some readers squicked. And he also stabs his love rival to get him outta the way...
- He really brings it home in the movieverse, though, especially in the third. In the very first scene of that one, he walks in and shows Storm, teaching a Danger Room class, how his method's better than hers. Then, what's supposedly an adaptation of the Dark Phoenix Saga gets underway... except that one of the most ambitious epics in comic-book history - and one which had little to do with Wolverine - is now all about him. Everybody else has basically been reduced to set decoration. Phoenix herself, a cosmic entity who can literally devour worlds, spends most of the movie standing quietly next to Magneto so Wolvie can try to find her, fighting the entire Brotherhood of Evil Mutants singlehandedly in the process. Cyclops, The Hero of the original, is disposed of early on (although it's more a case of Real Life Writes The Plot to free up the actor for Superman Returns. Still very annoying, and it's not like the movieverse is shy about recasting characters.) Even Storm, who takes the reins from the Not Quite Dead Professor X, winds up letting Wolverine call the shots in the final battle.
Literature
- Robert A Heinlein's Lazarus Long was grouchy, sarcastic, abrasive and cynical, with outdated attitudes and a death wish... who every man wanted to be and every woman wanted (and had), and who was
nearly effectively immortal to boot. In fact several of Heinlein's characters seem to fit this mold, especially in his later years.
- Gregory Benford's Nigel Walmsley is an abrasive personality with a tendency to get into trouble with authority figures. Nevertheless, he is a world-famous astronaut, scientist, and a ladies man with a talent for getting into threesome relationships with pairs of hot bisexual women. Despite his basic interpersonal incompetence, he has displayed the ability to successfully play the political game when he puts his mind into it. He is always right when it doesn't come into his personal life and has made more than his share of discoveries of aliens. Despite being a Non Action Guy, he has successfully used violence in a pinch. His most unlikely power is however the ability to decode alien radio signals. Remarkably, there had never been proper communication with the aliens, the transmission was a brief history of their race in pictures, and he decoded the whole thing in his head by hearing it played once. As sound.
- Mack in Tales Of MU. While she's probably being self-deprecating when she talks about her own unattractiveness, there's no real subjective nature to the facts that she's rude, snappish, self-centered, immature, and a danger to herself and others. And yet people still fall madly in love (or lust, or obsession) with her after only days or weeks of knowing her, a good portion of the cast is looking at her to lead a fight for their equality, and the only people that seem to truly dislike her are nasty-mean bigots and just plain jerks.
- Though that last part is changing with the Spin Off, whose characters are relatively decent people but share in the nasty gossip about her. Word Of God is that part of the reason for the spin off is that Mack is an Unreliable Narrator.
- Raven from Rhiannon Lassiter's Hex series. On the forums of the author's website, Lassiter actually admits that Raven is meant to be her alter ego. Raven is constantly described throughout the series as cold, antisocial, and possibly psychotic. However, she is also more powerful and skilled than any other mutant with the Hex gene, a skilled hacker, proficient in the use of weapons, and apparently socially adept enough to pose as a media executive who impresses powerful businessmen. She tends to spout wordy philosophical discourses on society and possesses the vocabulary of a college professor, despite being only 15 years old and supposedly an orphan who escaped from an institution with her siblings and survived on the streets. The first book describes her as very attractive, with a "perfect figure." The books repeatedly mention her "obsidian eyes." Everyone is in awe of her, even if they are frightened of her and doubt her sanity. She is apparently a Goth, as she always wears black and listens to 20th century heavy metal despite the fact that the setting is the 23rd century. Apparently the author named another character, Ali, after a real-life classmate she didn't get along with, and the fictional Ali is constantly referred to as a popular, pretty airhead who is made to feel worthless by Raven's superior skill and competence in all things. Keep in mind that the author started this book series in her teens, and got published very early.
- Kurt Vonnegut's recurring character Kilgore Trout is an ugly, unsuccessful science-fiction author with bad hygiene, who takes odd jobs to supplement his usual income from the porn magazines who buy his stuff for filler. And he's frequently more clued-in to what's going on around him than about half of his fellow characters. (Timequake ends with him saving the world by thinking of exactly the right thing to say at the right time.)
VideoGames
- Travis Touchdown may be an Anti Sue done right. He stretches the concept of Anti Hero as far as it can go; he is portrayed as an unlikable, violent, geeky, and porn-stealing prick; and he is frequently flat-out called a loser otaku. However, he not only survives the ordeals of No More Heroes, he somehow gets Sylvia to fall in love with him, and tends to be viewed very positively by most people who have played the game.
- Well, to be fair, most of the characters dislike or are indifferent towards Travis. It should also be noted that Sylvia is a con artist, and she most likely was faking affection towards Travis, so in-universe it might not be too evident. Still damn popular amongst the fans of the series however.
Webcomics
- Davan of Something Positive is probably a mild-to-middling example. While the comic likes to hammer home what an unattractive, mean-spirited, hopeless failure of a human being he is, he still has numerous women fall for him (or at least willing to come back to his place for a one night stand), has devoted friends (who, admittedly, are usually just as horrible people as he is), and says a lot of extremely rude, insulting, or just plain mean things to everyone he meets (often including his boss) without any apparent comeuppance.
- Mostly true, but let's be fair. His home spontaneously burnt down along with all of his possessions, his job as a medi-caid biller was living torture, most of his relationships are either implied, or directly stated to be, borderline abusive, and he occasionally shows a sweet side (such as when he promised to be there to help Eva, even after finding out that she cheated on him with her violently abusive ex and is now dumping Davan for the same guy). Mild Anti-Sue yes, but not really a Karma Houdini.
- Except every bad thing that you listed was not his fault nor was it an outcome of something bad he did. In fact, it mostly just cements the idea that we're supposed to feel sorry for his trials and tribulations and hardships... even though most of them actually lead to better situations (he hated the apartment anyway, he had almost no chance of getting fired, helping Eva after how she treated him makes him look saintly, etc.).
- Of course, if he appears saintly, he's hardly an Anti Sue.
- Amy Rose, the protagonist of the webcomic The Amy Rose Show. Annoyingly perverted? Check. Ridiculously alcoholic, but without the 'fun to drink with' part? Check. Being ugly enough to turn people to stone when she's naked? Check. Constantly starts fights where she gets her ass kicked? Check. Center of all attention? Check.
- Ethan from Ctrl Alt Del is generally portrayed as hovering between Cloud Cuckoolander and Ralph Wiggum, being a bit Too Dumb To Live as he screws up pretty much everything. Yet in spite of this and the fact that most characters have no illusions that he isn't flat out stupid, one can't help but notice that the characters are still anchored to him in spite of the fact that a rational human being would run as far as they can and he still gets a girlfriend that one can't help but think is a bit of Wish Fulfillment on creator Tim Buckley's part. The strip pretty much finalized this with a Story Arc that ends with Ethan being declared the "king of Winter-een-mas" (which, with its status as the major gaming holiday in the Ctrl Alt Del 'verse, is pretty much analogous to being declared the king of gaming). Mind you, he did invent Winter-een-mas, so that particular achievement was sort of deserved... Until he has to save the holiday from a Corrupt Corporate Executive and later the religion from the established ones in a couple of anvilicious sequences. And then there is the Handwave that some sort of talent keeps his video game store in business, despite the fact that all he does in-comic is being very rude to costumers and doing his paperwork by burning it.
- Tim Buckley has a stunning girlfriend in real life, and as you have said Ethan's only the king of Winter-een-mas because he made it up himself. The video game store started with him fire-filing his paperwork, but one would assume that nearly working himself to an early grave and the subsequent partnership with Lucas is the talent that's keeping it in business. Most importantly though, Ethan is likable. He cares about his friends and is generally motivated by good intentions.
- His likeability is tautological; he's likable because people are shown liking him. Any serious analysis reveals a circle of friends showering this antisocial (at times bordering on sociopathy), savant-like individual with uncritical adoration for no better reason than he tries (sometimes) and the plot requires it. So, Sue.
- First off: Without reading too much into Buckley's social life, much of the Wish Fulfillment comes from how he wishes some of his former relationships (especially the one with the miscarriage involved) had turned out. Secondly: The Handwave is still a archetypical Handwave because the facts that Ethan burns his important paperwork and that his only in-comic interactions with costumers is being rude towards them, behavior that would financially ruin any store, are explained away by Lucas in about three sentences. Lastly: The times Ethan displays random acts of reckless disregard for his friends' safety, health and property occurs more often than the times he is nice towards them.
- Cuthwald of NSFW Comix is sort of a joke anti-Sue for the author, Cybersp0nge. He describes the inspiration for him as being himself when he was younger. But everything surrounds the character, in a very bad way. Mostly ending up with Cuthwald going to jail for sexual harassment of some form or another.
Web Original
|
|
