Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys

Narrative

Genre

Media

Topical Tropes

Other Categories

Custom Search

Jerk Sue

redirected from Main.TsundereSue

alt title(s): Tsundere Sue; Jerkass Stu; Jerk Stu; Jerkass Sue
I'm a true bitch and I have constant PMS, love me!

"Seriously, Mary Sue, you worry me. You do realize that there is a difference - a very BIG difference - between a cool, collected, liberated woman and a violent, self-aggrandizing bitch? I can't get over how many of you girls think that physically abusing men for no reason other than you're annoyed with them makes you look 'cool'. It doesn't. You do realize that punching men for talking to you does not make you look feisty and independent, it makes you look dangerously unhinged and would not serve to endear you to anyone, still less the man you've just punched?"
— From this rant

Well, not every Mary Sue can have the patience of a saint. After all, if you were that perfect, lesser beings would get on your nerves too. Everyone falling in love with you? It's such a pain! People not always realizing that you are the most kickass person here and you have to be the one to save the day? Fools! People expecting you to follow the same rules as the other characters? You'll show them! Grr! Get out of Jerk Sue's way!

The basis of this trope is the tendency of many writers to create a bitter, ill-spirited, confrontational, or downright mean character and still play them up as an ideal person. The other characters tolerate the antics (which can range from petty to sociopathic), allowing him/her to walk all over them and talking them up in their conversations with each other. Common synonyms include "strong", "tough", and "rugged" while common topics include how much better they've made their lives through their "tough love" or whatever Freudian Excuse supposedly justifies their behavior. It's often an unsuccessful or inept attempt to play on Jerkass Dissonance.

There is something of a Double Standard at play when comparing male and female variants. The female Jerk Sue is usually a bit more complex and tends towards being a Tsundere (although perhaps more tsun than dere). This is what happens when instead of purity, innocence and love of little animals, the qualities the author most admires in a heroine are fighting spirit, spunk, and refusal to "take any crap". The male version, on the other hand, tends towards a different result. If the female variant is based on defiance of (dying) social expectations, the male variant is more of an affirmation of them. They tend to not be as conflicted as the female variant, instead showing an inflated sense of confidence and feed off of exaggerated male stereotypes (even if the writer is unaware of it). The male Jerk Sue is justified for basically being a Jerkass because men aren't supposed to show any emotion whatsoever other than, occasionally, rage; on the other hand, the female Jerk Sue is a sort-of victim of society who must show strength through rejecting almost anything seen as traditionally feminine.

Fan Work Examples

  • Enoby Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, the "goffik" girl from the infamous Harry Potter fanfic My Immortal. She's "So Beautiful, It's a Curse", manages to have all the strengths and none of the drawbacks to being a vampire (which just seems like an excuse for her to drink blood), and has all the canon men from Draco to "Vampire" Potter (both of whom got derailed into being bisexual, exaggeratedly "dark" characters that have apparently had a relationship with each other in the past) fawning over her. In spite of being a total bitch that wangsts endlessly and also an incident where she was caught red handed (or, perhaps more accurately, red-faced) having sex with Draco, she never gets punished because the administration likes her just that much. Even though most people consider it to be a trollfic, people still flock to it to tell the author how much it sucks whenever someone posts a link to it.
    • The fic is so well known that it has even spawned a few weak imitators.
      • How came that I was the only one to realise the first fic was written by Raven, the friend Tara mentions all over My Immortal!?
    • Since she has been spotted on IMDB and other sites well before she wrote her fic, she is not a troll. Her friend Raven is like her, minus the troll aspects.
    • Perhaps the whole thing was an immensely well-planned parody of the terrible Mary Sues that exist in fanfic. One piece of evidence: there are several popular Mary Sue Litmus Tests that match the Ebony Dark'ness Way character so well, it seems that the author used those litmus tests as a "checklist" of sorts in writing the story. Of course, it's also possible that the inverse is true: the Litmus Tests are using the Ebony Sue as a measuring stick. This would be quite an accomplishment, in a way. A very, very bad way.
      • Then again, there are more than a few characters in actual, non-parodic, published fantasy literature that receive nearly perfect scores on many of those tests, despite having been written years after them. Maybe Jung overlooked a certain violet-eyed archetype in his survey of the collective unconscious.
  • If The Prince Of Tennis fangirls aren't swimming in the sea of Ho Yay and Foe Yay, they're usually creating Mary Sues of the "only female player in the Seigaku male team, who is too good for the icky girls' team and is bitchy and rude, but everyone loves her anyway. And she gets the love of her Boy Du Jour despite her whiny, bitchy, insufferable attitude.
  • There is a reason why these are called Bitchiwitch Sues in the Harry Potter fandom.
    • One Harry Potter Fanfic has it that the Sue!sister of Blaise Zabini and her friends loved to "prank" Draco Malfoy. Pranks involved things like distracting him while another friend hit him in the stomach with a quaffle, or sneaking up invisible on him and kicking him in between the legs. Even if you don't see Draco In Leather Pants, this is going a bit far.
      • Anyone else remember that Christopher Walken SNL skit that culminated with the line, "And then I pranked him to death with a tire iron!"? It's basically that, but played straight.
      • It was all fun and games until the tire iron. That sketch creepified the crap outta me.
    • The Girl Who Lived. Worse than Voldemort!
    • Many Harry Potter fanfics turn Harry into a classic example of the male version.
    • In too many fanfics, the American girl that goes to Hogwarts is a full-blown Jerk Sue, and feared and respected for it.
  • If there's a fandom with one or more female characters exhibiting strong Tsundere / Action Girl / Dark Action Girl / Hot Amazon / Little Miss Badass / Dark Magical Girl / Plucky Girl / Ace Pilot / Cute Bruiser / Emotionless Girl / Badass Bookworm / The Ladette / etc. traits, it's a sure bet that fanfiction will often remark on these traits even more as part of a Possession Sue so she can show off how much a "strong woman" and how "much better than the weak, shrill, downtrodden girls" the Sue is. Some common victims of this Sue-fication process are:
  • There are a depressing number of Jerk Sues in Sherlock Holmes fanfiction, in the form of a modern adolescent girl who either travels back to Victorian times or uses Applied Phlebotinum to bring Holmes to the present. Despite her abrasive, foulmouthed, bitchy personality, the Great Detective usually ends up declaring his undying love for her by the end of the fic.
  • Jerk Sues are VERY common in Weiss Kreuz fanfiction and almost always are of the "fifth Weiss member who melts Aya's ultra super cold heart, thinks Yohji is a slutty asshole and Ken is a brainless moron, huggles Omi, and gets away with bitchslapping all males yet screams "ABUSE" as soon as she gets what's coming for her attitude" type. The quote above actually comes from this rant about it.
  • Peter Guerin, of Daria fanfic infamy, often converted the abrasive but non-violent Daria into something bordering on the level of a violent sociopath - something the stories seemed to think was perfectly okay and normal. In Triumph of the Retart, Daria was depicted as beating Sandy so savagely that she was "lying in a pool of her own blood". And the story thought this was a good thing. Oh, and Daria kicked crotches at the drop of a hat, something that became a running gag in the MSTings of the fics.
  • Transformers O Cs do this a lot, with the chances doubling if they're Decepticon or non-allied. Beating up a random character or defying orders handed down by their commander is often used to demonstrate their power or rebellious nature. Look for bonus denouncement of other canon or OC females, because hating all the "feminine" women just shows what a badass you are.
    • One example is the aggressive misogynist Darkhawk, who manages to avoid all consequences of cursing out powerful, crazed Decepticons with fusion generators strapped to their arms.
    • Ironically, in Transformers Animated, Starscream's female clone (many Sues are Starscream lookalikes) has 'raging bitch' as her core personality trait. However, she's far from a Sue and only appears in two episodes without being named or doing anything of huge plot consequence.
  • Lydia MacGreggor of Heroine of the Valley's Sailor Rainbow series, despite having a very girly title for a magical girl, has a quite nasty and easily provoked temper. She'll even go so far as to threaten to beat up her friends if they don't agree with her. Around Fiore or Seamus Finnigan, however, she is a sweetie and, in Fiore's case, a weepy mess when she's away from him. Nor does she have any problems getting guys to go out with her. This goes along with the fact that she is one big Irish stereotype.
  • The long-winded World Of Warcraft fanfic Stand of the Exiles stars a draenei shadow priestess—who is an abrasive, wangsty tsundere generally Cursed With Awesome—and her Purity Stu paladin snugglebunny. Although the story itself appears to no longer be online, it's sporked in some detail here.
  • Say hello to Carrie Angel. Danny Phantom's girlfriend, and very sarcastic. She has some badass (and pink) ghost powers. Her author and her friends argue that because Carrie has attitude, she does not qualify as a Sue. The author has a lot of enemies, but also a lot of friends who support Danny x Carrie. Funnily enough, the author's blatant self-insert is less of a Sue than this character. Guess Chrissy didn't idealize herself that much.
  • There is a somewhat known example in the Boondocks fandom. Anjelika Marie Smith, the incredibly Mary Sue quasi-self insert of the DeviantArt user Jazzy-b-real13, is described as being "Extremely Aggressive," "Incredibly Vulgar and Loud," and as carrying an undying love towards Riley Freeman.
  • Also common in House fanfics, where the author thinks that writing a self-insert just like the Doctor himself (or worse) and insulting each and every character will make a good story. Trouble is, because of the Sympathetic POV the show has on House, trying to only be like his Jerkass side really doesn't work.
  • Perhaps due to its shonen nature, Dragonball Z has no lack of Jerk Sues. Strangely, most of them are women - but when you consider who's writing most of them, it makes sense. A particularly glaring example is Princess Vejitina, a blatant Author Avatar more unpleasant than Vegeta on his worst day and more beloved (within the context of the story, at least) than Goku at the height of his popularity.
  • Repo The Genetic Opera Sues and self-inserts seem to fall into this a lot. As well, they all seem to be the girls "destined" for Graverobber, the drug-dealing hottie hobo.

Canon Examples

Anime and Manga
  • Ryoki Tachibana from the manga Hot Gimmick. Although he's utterly obsessed with Hatsumi, the series' doormat female lead, he's usually far too up himself to ever do anything as pointless as care about her. His response to most of her (considerable) problems is "forget it, just focus on me". Later, however, he begins to develop genuine feelings for her, but still retains his possessive and obsessive nature. And if we count the novel, he actually loses her to Shinogu
  • Takeru from the manga Devil Beside You (Akuma De Sourou) is definitely a Jerkass Stu. He picks on Kayano like crazy, uses her as a slave, and breaks her up from Nice Guy Kamijou Yuuichi. After cutting her romance with the guy short, he proceeds to ignore her and flirt with other women. He later gives the excuse that this was all part of an Operation Jealousy, ignoring that she had already admitted her feelings to him and was his girlfriend.
  • Leon Oswald from Kaleido Star skirts the line, being ridiculously skilled for his early age as well as a complete Jerk Ass to both Sora and May. Thank God he does progressively get better, though.
  • The reason why Akane and her sister Nabiki Tendo frequently get exaggerated into this trope in fanfiction (see Fanon Examples, above) is because there are genuine reasons why a reader or a viewer might see them as this in the canon of Ranma One Half.
    • Nabiki Tendo, over the series, becomes little more then a sarcastic money-grubber who only cares about herself. She hires herself out to antagonists like Principal Kuno, then runs away when she gets paid. She routinely takes candid shots of her sister's Gender Bender fiance and sells them, against his will, and is even willing to do the same to said sister. She commonly extorts money from Ranma, even being willing to threaten his life for a sum as low as 500 yen. She even invited all of Ranma's other fiancees and his rivals, many of whom are in love with Akane themselves, to his and Akane's wedding because she was greedy enough to believe they would bring cash presents that she could keep for herself. And never once does she get taken to task for this.
    • Akane Tendo has some touchings of this, but the fandom is split on whether she is or is not. On one hand, she is a legitimately good-hearted person, if somewhat tempermental, and she does have her share of problems. For a start, she's Overshadowed By Awesome and Cant Catch Up, a Pettanko in a Love Dodecahedron with multiple women — including her fiance — who have the Most Common Superpower, and a Cordon Bleugh Chef surrounded bySupreme Chefs. On the other hand, when upset she is prone to doing some really Jerk Ass things — and sometimes with relatively little provocation. The main reason she could tenatively be called a Jerk Su is because she is never canonically called out or reprimanded when she does do something wrong — in fact, often it is her victim (usually Ranma Saotome) who is blamed and said to be at fault. One of the earliest examples is when Ranma is first introduced to Dr. Tofu in his male form, where the doctor laughs off Akane's brutal treatment of Ranma — despite having previously described the injuries as being terrible when he was unaware that Akane caused them — and tells Ranma he should try and be nice to Akane. Or even the very first chapter/episode, with Akane's bludgeoning Ranma unconscious with the table for making a comment about her build (after Akane had been insulting Ranma for his curse and because she walked in on him naked) being described as justified and her sister telling Ranma to not get angry with Akane for it, on the grounds "she's a very sweet girl, she's just a little high spirited".
  • Kazuma of Kaze No Stigma definitely flirts with this trope. After abusive treatment as a child, he returns ultra-powerful and pulls Whos Laughing Now on his family. This entails acting like a jerk to them, especially to his kissing cousin, the hero of the series. Kazuma mocks her and on occasion deliberately makes her jealous, and he stands alone among When A Jerk Loves A Tsundere as the only "jerk hero" who is simply too powerful for the tsundere to land an Armor Piercing Slap.

Comic Books
  • Sonic The Hedgehog in the British Fleetway comic. Not an issue went by where he didn't verbally abuse Tails or put down one of the other good guys. Not only did he always get away with this behavior, but the entire planet worshiped him for it. Admittedly, this was meant to accentuate his "'tude," but they maybe took it a bit far. Towards the end of the comic series, he would start to realize how much of a jerk he has been (and he most certainly was not always right about everything). Unfortunately, it was too late by then to save him from this trope. Nigel Kitching actually stated in interview that he wanted Sonic to be rude to Tails and get away with it. Fortunately, The recent online fan continuation of the series seems to be going some way to rectifying this by showing some of the consequences of his behavior. A new Corrupt Corporate Executive Big Bad is using it against him as part of a propaganda campaign that's got most of Mobius thinking he's worse than Robotnik.
  • Though the debate rages on, Damian Wayne. Some say that he's Grant Morrison's Deconstruction of a Mary Sue, while others say that if he were such a Deconstruction, he wouldn't be able to get away with the shit he pulls.
    • Damian probably doesn't count because really, nobody likes him. His adoptive older brother (Tim Drake) outright hates his guts, and his other adoptive older brother (Dick Grayson) only puts up with him because the alternative is letting the murderous, 10 year old run around on his own. Hell, even his own father didn't want to deal with him.
    • On the other hand, Damian has repeatedly gotten away with torture and murder, even in Nightwing's direct presence. So however much they hate him, they still never take the little shit to task.

Film
  • Most characters played by Clint Eastwood, especially the anti-heroes. From Spaghetti Westerns to "Dirty Harry," Eastwood-characters always seem to carry the message of modern cynicism: typical "good guy" characters (and the values they represent) are weak and foolish, and that "hip" intelligent heroes should always shoot first, never giving the enemy a chance. In High Plains Drifter, Eastwood even engages in a Rape Is Love scene against an "uppity woman".
    • In "High Plains Drifter" it's less Rape Is Love as rape as punishment. Since she was partly responsible for his character being whipped to death and returning to the town as a dark ghost of vengence in the first place.
    • Averted in The Good The Bad And The Ugly, where the only people Eastwood's character is a jerk to is Tuco and Angel Eyes, who aren't exactly nice characters themselves. He even gives a dying soldier his coat and comforts him in his last moments.
    • And Deconstructed in Unforgiven.
  • John Wayne movies from around the forties and early fifties usually cast him as some exaggeratedly "rugged" character who gets away with being abrasive, rude, confrontational toward everybody, and downright abusive towards women. He was always "justified" in this behavior near the end, as plot events conspired to show that he was ultimately right in every single thing he did. That Mexican he called racist remarks for getting in his way? Turns out he's working for the Big Bad. That former love interest he called useless? After leaving him, she finds herself unable to cope with civilization and falls back into his arms. And back when these movies were made, John Wayne was considered a PARAGON of masculinity. Now, it's looked back upon as a Dork Age all its own.
    • The Duke's characters were largely a "realism" contrast to early Hollywood Westerns, which typically which made Blazing Saddles look realistic by comparison.
    • Much debate exists over whether The Searchers is a Deconstruction of this, a subversion of this, or a straight example that lends itself to Alternate Character Interpretation based on Values Dissonance. In it, Wayne plays a character who is much the same as his standard rugged Sue character... except the character's inherent flaws (such as the racism) are exposed more harshly. He ends the movie alone, isolated from his entire family, including the one he'd been searching for.
    • Averted in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, in which Wayne's character Tom Doniphon is an abrasive, arrogant jerk respected only for his shooting skill, until a naive, kind lawyer-type comes to town and stands up to the Big Bad (the eponymous Liberty Valance). Even though he convinces the lawyer to face Valance with a gun instead of a lawbook, and actually shoots Valance from the shadows when the lawyer misses, Doniphon loses his girl and the respect of the community to the lawyer, who goes on to become the state's first senator.
      • But it's also implied that by taking credit for something he didn't do, the lawyer loses his self-respect and that his wife never really thought he was the better man. There are no easy answers in this one.
  • The main character in Paparazzi. He goes all Unstoppable Rage after his adorable baby son is in a Convenient Coma after an accident caused by Mean Mean Ultra Amoral Paparazzi assholes. He kills three of them and frames the Boss for the crimes, and gets away with it. Then again, the movie is produced by Mel Gibson.
  • Slab Bulkhead David Ryder from Space Mutiny. He learns An Aesop about accepting help from the female lead, only for her to be worse than useless in the final fight. It turns out that he didn't' need anyone's help. He's just that boring and invincible.
    • He does get to roast a crippled bad guy. Fun and heroic!
  • Mike Hammer of the film Kiss Me Deadly is the epitome of a 50s Jerkass Stu. Cold, misogynistic, bloodthirsty, capable of solving any problem with his cash and/or his fists (and a bag of popcorn in one memorable instance), and able to bash in a door, save his secretary and run out of a house with a nuke going off after being shot in the gut. Incidentally, mere minutes before the Hammer got shot, another man was shot in the same place and died within seconds. He'd be a Heroic Sociopath if he were in any way heroic, but since this is decidedly not the case, he has to settle for being a Villain Protagonist and all around Jerkass, though he probably doesn't mind. That popcorn thing was pretty hardcore, though.
    • If that really is a nuke, then at least he gets a comeuppance in the end.

Literature
  • Kyrie, one of Johnny Truant's more memorable one-night stands in House Of Leaves, is a subversion. She's introduced as "a tall blonde haired beauty who spoke Chinese, Japanese and French, drank beer by the quart, trained for triathlons when she wasn't playing competitive squash, made six figures a year as a corporate consultant, and loved to fuck." In her presence, Truant forgets completely about the woman he's been idolizing. Later on in the book, Kyrie becomes jealous that Johnny Truant doesn't seem to love her as much as other people and sics her huge boyfriend on him, prompting the emaciated and deranged Truant to almost kill him and then almost kill her. Better remember that Truant is an Unreliable Narrator.
  • Being the archetypal White Haired Pretty Boy, Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné is one big Deconstruction of this character type.
  • Bagsby the thief from Mark Acres' short-lived Land Between The Rivers series (DragonSpawn and DragonWar), whose character sheet reads much like that from a munchkin fantasy campaign. Bagsby is a monstrously huge asshole to everybody he encounters, a con artist, an obvious bald-faced liar, and totally unscrupulous and yet people still believe everything he says and fall all over themselves in love or admiration for him — especially after he gets conscripted into the king's army later and manages to stop HeilsheimHeilsheim's imperial aims through sheer dumb luck. He's portrayed as being "mildly" out of shape, but can still pull off "awesome" feats as the plot demands it. As is expected of a Canon Sue, lardbutt hooks up with a hot female elf, who is assumed to be more beautiful than an Avariel.
  • Karsa Orlong. The biggest, baddest ass-kicker in a setting filled to the brim with big, bad ass-kickers. He can beat anyone, anyone,) in physical combat, and is all but immune to magic; this makes him pretty much unstoppable. In addition, while absolutely everyone is afraid of him, no one seems to dislike him, even though he is a Jerk Ass. They are all in awe of his fighting skills, his [[Determinator indomitable willpower]], and his sheer badassness. This in a setting where the gods themselves rarely inspire much in the way of awe. This is a character who boasts that once he gets home, he's going to destroy human civilization and take over the world. Despite this, his human companions still stick around him for the most part.
    • To be fair, there have been quite a number of beings who disliked Karsa. Most of them were just killed by Karsa. Mostly, people tend to view him as an unpleasant force of nature. Still, he doesn't have a collection of human companions (just the one, really) and there are a handful of others in the universe who could go toe to toe with him and have some chance of victory.
    • Most of Karsa's reputation is based on his boasts. While he's certainly a good warrior, he's never come up against e.g. Anomander Rake, Caladan Brood, Onos T'oolan, the Seguleh First, or even Quick Ben; any of those is liable to kick his ass nine ways from saturday.
    • Also, it should be noted that the first time we saw him, he got his butt kicked by a blind old man without hands.
  • The titular character from Eragon. Between the way he treats Murtagh, who had been magically bound to serve the Designated Villain against his will, and what he does to Sloan, who had only been trying to protect his daughter, it's hard to see Eragon as anything but a colossal Jerk Ass. And yet we are supposed to root for him when he acts... well, evil.
  • Both of the main protagonists of Left Behind are narrow-minded, misogynistic jackasses who only look good because the author tells you they look good.
    • When you're in the same series as the Antichrist, and you come off as the biggest emotionally-manipulative and smug asshole in the story, you have a problem.
  • Richard Rahl, the main character of the Sword Of Truth series, comes off as this in one or two of the books, primarily Naked Empire, which includes the infamous "Evil Pacifists," which his army cuts their way through to fight the actual enemy army. He's excused for this by the narration because of his "Moral Clarity."
  • Edward Cullen from Twilight acts like a complete bastard towards Bella, stalking her, constantly insulting her, and not letting her see her friends. And yet he's portrayed as the ideal boyfriend.
    • Even his own actor thinks he sucks.
      When you read the book, it's like 'Edward Cullen is so beautiful I creamed myself.' I mean, every line was like that. He's the most ridiculous person who's so amazing at everything. I think a lot of actors tried to play that aspect. I just couldn't do that. And the more I read the script, the more I hated this guy, so that's how I played him, a manic-depressive who hates himself. Plus he's a 108 year old virgin so he's obviously got some issues there.
    • And that, folks, is a bona fide CMOA on Robert Pattinson's part
    • He admitted he only took the part because he always had a celebrity crush on female lead Kristen Stewart. If not for her being the lead, he would've left in disgust but you try passing up the chance to be the perfect love interest of your favorite actor/actress.
  • Joshua Calvert from Peter F. Hamilton's Nights Dawn Trilogy is a good candidate for Jerkass Suedom. And he certainly comes off smelling like roses after condemning humanity to stagnation.
  • Peter Delasangre, in at least the first book of Alan F. Troop's dragon series. He starts out as an unusually honorable member of a basically amoral species, but becomes a completely unsympathetic character over the course of the tale. And being a Troopian dragon, he is of course Cursed With Awesome.

Live Action TV
  • Janice Battersby In Coronation Street. Rude to just about everyone, and generally behaves like a spoilt child. None the less, nobody shuns her for it and despite getting sacked several times, she's always given her job back in the end despite the fact that no realistic employer would hire such an annoying bitch.
  • Dr. Luisa Mercedes "Lu" Delgado from Strong Medicine. Basically, Lu treats every male (aside from her son) like crap, whines nonstop about men being SO UTTERLY MEAN to women while she keeps mistreating males, and is horribly rude and bitchy towards important people who could get her fired or sued. However, since she's the Designated Heroine, practically everyone adores her to pieces, go on on how "coreageous" and "wonderful" she is, and rarely does she get her crap thrown back at her. Since this is a series from the Lifetime Channel produced by Whoopi Goldberg (who even has a cameo as a high-ranked doctor), one can't help but wonder if Whoopi was having her revenge against males after her break-up with Ted Danson.
    • Let's not forget that she's got her huge hatred against those who have more money than she does. Since she's a Self Made Strong Woman, Lu is an absolute bitch towards rich people, whether they're OMG EBUL or not. In fact, when she hooked up with another Self Made Man, she whined and threw endless tantrums because at some point he was worried about his possible bankruptcy (which would, yanno, ruin the hard work of his whole life) while she was pregnant, to the point of threatening with leaving and taking their future baby with her because he wasn't in the mental state to kiss her ass. Yeah, it's valid to be worried and moody when you're pregnant, but that's just being a sself-centered bitch.
  • Dr. Grace Miller from Scrubs fits the Jerk Sue concept incredibly well. She generally tries to represent "woman power", for which Elliot adores her. Cox himself is attracted to her because she acts like a jerk. A good example is the way she completely overreacts to Turk's (well-intentioned) attempt to make her feel welcome and protect her from all the sexist surgeon jocks. After that, she can't decide if she's a tough woman who's got all men on a leash or a tsundere who bullies Turk because he excluded her from coming to his marriage. It should be noted that the writer did notice this and wrote her out of the show.
    • The main problem with Miller was her late arrival. The writers wanted a female Dr. Cox, despite the fact his own ex-wife already fills that place. The important difference? Cox is a Jerkass Mentor who was there and built a working character dynamic from the pilot episode on and who, whilst overtly acting like a jerk, nevertheless displays many qualities that nevertheless work to genuinely endear him to the audience and the other characters. Miller arrived at the end of the third season as a newcomer without visible redeeming qualities bullying long-established characters. Yeah. Take a place on the Scrappy Heap.
  • Kamen Rider Kabuto: Main character Tendou Souji is an Insufferable Genius with an Omniscient Morality License. He acts like a total jerkass, but, as if he were an elf, no one ever calls him out on it. Everyone seems to love him except the bad, bad villains.
    • He does mellow out a fair bit by the end of the series. The haughtiness goes from his real face to a pretty paper-thin mask. Still doesn't change that people don't call him on it, though.
    • While Tendou is undoubtedly a jerkass, and has many other Sueish traits, this troper would argue that he isn't a Jerk Sue. Some other kind, maybe. His arrogance and high-handed behaviour annoys many people, while the definition of a Jerk Sue above seems to include being liked all the more for being obnoxious. On the other hand, there are several occasions when he uses charm, for example schmoozing his way through a police station or inspiring someone with the Warmth of His Cooking - it's his competence, sincerity, and (very occasional) charm that win him friends and allies, not his abuse of them. Also, check out his monumental sulk when Yaguruma first turns up - the writers themselves consider his behaviour childish and funny, not a virtue.
  • The main character of the '70s detective show Banacek. He constantly abuses all the other characters, including loyal friends and love interests. When another character finally calls him out on his smugness, that character is later shown to be the bad guy.
  • Alex Russo. Some fans hate how much of a jerk she can truly be at times and seems to get away with it. The creators even lampshaded it a couple of times.
  • Alex Drake on Ashes to Ashes. At her best she's completely indifferent to the people around her; at her worst, she's downright rude. She even punches a man in the face, knowing that he won't hit back. Due to sometimes thinking that everyone around him was a hallucination, Sam Tyler in Life on Mars behaved this way sometimes, but he didn't make a career of it like Alex does. Yet we're supposed to think that somehow she's more competent and compassionate than the cops of the '80s that she's surrounded by.
  • Judith Melnick, Evelyn Harper her son and Charlie Harper of Two and a Half Men can defiently qualify as the Female and Male versions of this trope. They are absolutely immoral, self-caring people who look down on everyone and make others wanna blow their brains to escape them in a crowded elevator. Charlie's a total Jerkass at his worse and Judith and Evelyn are almost demonic sues at their worst and all three have few karmatic punishments.

Video Games
  • A few disgruntled fans would label Franziska Von Karma of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney fame as one of these however, it is with good reason. Having an attitude better suited to a character from one of those Merchandise Driven Serious Business series (I'm looking at you, Beyblade )She is plainly shown bringing a harmful weapon (her whip) into court and using it on other lawyers, police offiers and even The Judge, an act that would get any other lawyer instantly disbarred, possibly arrested and yet she always gets away with it, to say nothing of taking an illegal photograph of Maya channeling Mia. She also has several other Common Mary Sue Traits - She is the previously unmentioned daughter of a bad guy from the previous game, has a very unique relationship with fan favourite Edgeworth (something every Fan Girl dreams of)and became a lawyer at the ridiculous age of thirteen. There are some who say she originated in a really bad self-insert fic, which does make sense if you think of her as a parody of the typical Mary Sue that most fangirls use in their fics.
  • Prishe from Final Fantasy XI: Chains of Promathia is a particularly scary case of a fully-grown Final Fantasy fanfic style Mary Sue (regardless what that means to you, she fits) in a (vaguely) canonical game. Indeed, she could be put on most of the other pages, but she gets the prize for being so incredibly over-the-top in her "spunkiness". There isn't a single moment where she isn't either calling somebody out (usually over something trivial) or just generally complaining (often over how it sucks to be her). Yet, for all her abrasiveness, there is not one person who challenges her to her face. Indeed, characters feel derailed when dealing with her; even a Proud Warrior Race Guy falls in place around this small girl. There's even a character that exists for no reason but to hammer in to the audience that yes, she's very special underneath her twenty layers of bitchiness. The closest things to backlash she gets are her town referring to her as "the Abhorrent One" - in reference not to her personality, but to how she's just too powerful and special to bear (right) - and her status as a "social outsider," which is promptly contradicted when her role as head of the patrol guards is revealed. As for what is meant by "fanfic style" - she manages the neat trick of making the story feel like a generic fanfic rewrite of a regular Final Fantasy game by a 14-year-old rebellious girl whose biggest gripe with the original story was that she wasn't in it. From the moment Prishe enters the scene to the end, the plot's comprehensibility and general continuity gets shot to hell because things get unnaturally focused on her. It feels like no real effort was given to make her anything close to important in the plot because it would have been too much effort: her importance is an Informed Ability. To indemnify her further, she indulges in Common Mary Sue Traits. She's an Elvaan girl who stopped aging after a chance encounter with a Cosmic Keystone (the same one that apparently gave her near-godly superpowers), and she has some great destiny that (ostensibly) ties into the fate of the known universe. In spite of (ostensibly) being treated like a social outcast, she has the best outfit of anybody you meet in Tavnazia.
    • Prishe is still semi-popular, but almost exclusively for her character model◊. Comments about how Prishe is "hot" (and legal - despite having the body of a young kid, she's well over the age of consent) are common. Comments about Prishe being a well-developed, believable character are extremely rare. Even people who like her for her characterization won't try to argue against her being a Mary Sue.
  • The Silencer of the Crusader games is an unrepentant monster who's only in La Resistance for the vengeance. No one seems to have the guts to chew him out for setting civilians on fire and watching them run around screaming.
    • The Captain's only a monster if the player makes him a Psycho For Hire. Most of the civilians you do encounter tend to cringe in their spot when a firefight erupts; however, some show their Evil Minion Side by trying to raise an alarm that inevitably brings in more WEC mooks to rain on your parade. The guy is a Silencer, after all, and letting anyone hit the alarm button makes his task unnecessarily difficult. Of course, they might be caught in the middle of the firefight, but the Captain's only a Jerkass Stu if the player makes him that way.
    • To be fair, The Captain is a major asset to their cause, being a literal One Man Army and draining very little resources from the Resistance, mostly because they don't trust him for all the right reasons. They probably put up with him because he's good at getting the job done.
  • While it's debatable whether he's a "bad" character, the protagonist of Two Worlds falls squarely into the male version of this trope. Seemingly the best fighter around, he's very well aware of his capabilities, and tends to be somewhat condescending to everyone he meets. Depending on how you play him, he can also be a total scumbag, and the plotline requires that he knowingly destroy at least one entire city to get an artifact he needs to save his sister. Not only is he never called on his actions in-game, he seems to be something of a Draco In Leather Pants among players.
  • Arguably, King Varian Wrynn. In stark contrast to the relatively passive approach of other leaders, Varian is presented as something of a crusader and Well Intentioned Extremist. Unfortunately, a heavy-handed approach with the storytelling, lack of attention given to other Alliance leaders, and focus on his actions rather than his motivations in-game has led to him coming off as a considerable Jerk. As for his Marty Sam credentials...a considerable amount of retconning went into fitting Varian back into the story, and he has immediately been accepted as the unquestioned supreme leader of the Alliance. Garrosh Hellscream of the Horde has had a similar response, but—tellingly—it's not as widespread or dramatic due to his role in cutscenes and the overall narrative being a lot smaller than Varian's.
    • The difference between them is that Saurfang thinks Garrosh is a moron, but is too diplomatic to say so; Thrall has faith in his abilities, but not his judgment. Throw in some character derailment from his Burning Crusade portrayal as well...and you have a Scrappy. Varian Wrynn just comes off as a bigot...and the only person in the Alliance who seems to oppose him at all is Jaina. Ergo, Garrosh is The Scrappy; Varian is a Sue.
      • Just to put things in perspective as to just how deep the Jerk Sueing goes for Varian Wrynn - Jaina Proudmoore stood up to her own father when he tried to fight Thrall and the Horde, and even could be attributed to assisting in his downfall and eventual death. Her own. Father. But when Varian Wrynn is concerned, her IQ immediately drops by about 50 points and she just stands there mostly silent while he starts to do the exact same thing. It's completely out of character, and the general canon bends to fulfill Wrynn's purpose in starting a highly contrived war.
      • No, seriously, datamined spoilers from 3.3: Varian partially redeems himself at Icecrown Citadel when he lets Saurfang pass to recover his fallen son and speaks highly of his honor. However, one could argue the Sueing is still somewhat rooted in there, as Jaina suddenly tears up and fawns all over him due to this very minor development.

Web Comics
  • Rayne of Least I Could Do: A misogynistic, self-absorbed, Man-Whore who thinks of himself as the paragon of manliness. In spite of his Jerkass attitude, he also can have sex with nearly any woman in the world, he has a very high-paying job, he has friends who like him despite his moronity, he seems to come on top of any situation no matter what, and he has a canonically ever-brilliant future, no matter what he does. The writer, Ryan Sohmer, has admitted that Rayne is an Author Avatar.
    • Complete with the occasional (very tongue-in-cheek) Author Tract.
      • One arc subverts this, with his friends faking his handwriting in his schedule book, causing him to run around to incredibly foolish places looking for sex. The ending sees him finally see one of his schemes fall apart spectacularly, when he tells a disgusting joke to 2 lesbians and 2 female police officers — while he was in a fake police uniform as part of a Xanatos Gambit to get said lesbians to sleep with him — which causes them to throw him in jail. Of course, since he's a Marty Stu, he was minutes away from getting away with sleeping with ALL of them if he hadn't been stupid enough to ruin the mood.
    • Not played entirely straight; the comic has given Rayne some depth, with the Christmas Carol arc suggesting that his Man-Whore behavior is a defense mechanism developed following a devastating early break-up. He's also shown to be an irredeemable Cloud Cuckoolander. Further, while he does pull mean pranks on his friends, he shows real concern for them when the chips are down, and really does care about them (as well as unconditionally loving his niece Ashley), as well as being very competent when it really matters, such as his job. On the whole he comes off as a parody of the Marty Stu trope, such that he takes it so far that it comes back around the other side, it's funny.
      • The buildup of Karma Houdinis pulls it back across the line. To avoid this,it's plain that more pain should fall mainly on the Rayne.
    • Another thing to note is that Rayne has had a lot of crap dumped on him, canonicly, and being a Karma Houdini is a trait of the entire series, not just him. His brother regularly shows up as someone who gives him crap (as do several other characters) and Noel and John can generally give as good as they take. (Okay, maybe not John). What is important to note, however, is that Ryan Sohmer is a very successful businessman: Least I Could Do began in early 2003, and yet Blind Ferret Entertainment (which Sohmer started several years after Least I Could Do began) now runs merchandising for several prominent comics other than his own... Including Ctrl Alt Del. Whatever else he might be exaggerating, his business acumen is accurate.
  • Shredded Moose offers the character of Brew, a hateful, misogynistic Jerkass well beyond the Moral Event Horizon and comes off as something of a Complete Monster, yet he is accepted by nearly everybody (except the reader), has no shortage of women throwing themselves onto him, and has the strip conspiring to prove him right at every turn (no matter how flimsy). This is just one of the many, many horribly offensive things contained in this comic.
  • Kimiko Ross of Dresden Codak has nothing but nasty words and rolled eyes even for her best friends, but it's okay because she's a brilliant Omnidisciplinary Scientist and a cyborg and a space angel and responsible for the destruction of mankind and god I don't even know.
    • On the other hand, her massive social ineptitude means that if she ever wants a boyfriend, she'll have to build him herself.
    • She's a Sue all right, but "Jerk" is a stretch. Normally she's too introverted to misbehave; the one time she really acts like an asshole is late in the "Hob" story-arc, when she becomes convinced she's the Machine Messiah or something. She's right, but she also gets what's coming to her for her behavior.
  • Ethan in belmont2500's Land Before Time crossovers is a huge example of this. In fact, due to the incredibly short length of the stories he's in, his entire personality seems to revolve around him being a heroic asshole.
  • Mopey from B-Movie Comic is another example, regularly getting away with violence or cruelty that nobody seems to notice unless it happens to them, and then it's 'deserved' or a groin attack. An excellent example of the heroic sociopath done wrong.
Web Original
  • Sami from Little White Lie. She's beautiful and musically talented and has several guys with crushes on her...yet she plagarizes one of the previously mentioned guys and is a complete bitch to everyone.

Meta
  • A rather good essay on the Macho Sue in fiction.
God Mode Sue
« Mary Sue Tropes »
Parody Sue
new edits
forum
page history
edit page
view source
discuss
Creative Commons License
This wiki is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.