"Is my character a Mary Sue" thread

I've always wondered: Is it possible for objects to become Mary Sues? I mean one of my stories has a giant armor plated motorhomecycle that sports two large bore cannons for massive destruction and fun!

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Yes, in the sense of being the author's pet. Objects can count as characters, after all, if used that way.

A brighter future for a darker age.

I'm going to make a valley a Mary Sue! The god of geographic legends! It is said to be better than all other valleys and resist erosion in the equivalent force of a 50 megaton nuclear hydrogen bomb!

Is there even a term for such a thing?! There will be soon enough...

Soon anti-Mary Sue valleys will appear as subversions to this trend! And copy cats will follow as well.What have I done to open the door to mediocrity of valleys?! They used to be so vivid with character and depth!

Soon people will be trying to figure out how to make 'balanced' valleys, and not seem unrealistic or dreadful to certain readers as they complain of how terribly powerful valleys have become!

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meta-note: I am very exhuasted and thought I would lighten the mood, I think somehow mary sue maddness may of started somehow this way...

as of the 2nd of Nov. has 6 weeks for a broken collar bone to heal and types 1 handed and slowly

That's not a Mary Sue valley, that's just Crazy Awesome!

This is a signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

That is not what Crazy Awesome means. Go check out the TRS thread on it for more.

That out of the way, I can only sum up the idea as "stupidly cool".

Would a Mary Sue valley be a "Valley Girl?"

@Rainbow: arrrrgh! I physically cringed at that one.

A brighter future for a darker age.

If that valley contained a town or something, it could be a Mary Suetopia.

I'm wondering if my characters are Sues... or Stus, more like it.

Pretty much my main characters are a guy who's been subjected to so many time-travel experiments that his memories are mush and brain is scrambled and is immune to going mad from the revelation because he's already seen it, and honestly, it's not that great. Also, everyone thinks he's the survivor of a failed moon colony because of his lack of valid papers (he has lots of fake or unusable ones, though). The other character is pretty much a more moe Nyarlathotep (well, maybe not moe, exactly, but more moe than Lovecraft's version) who kind of thinks that maybe the whole ravaging the countryside as a flesh-eating plague and attacking New Orleans as a kaiju is kind of bad so maybe he should do something about it? or maybe not? So he's doing this whole existential crisis thing where he bothers humans and tries to be friends with them. What happens is they meet up, go on some wacky adventures in the great nothing between Minneapolis and New Orleans, fight zombies, drug smugglers, and a militarized version of the Westboro Baptist Church (with some help of Nyarlathotep cultists) to get there, and fall in love because of the whole I Love You Because I Can't Control You and the eldritch abomination doesn't pity the moon man's crazy. Eventually any regret Nyarl Jr. had is cleared up because the moon man is convinced that you are what you are even if you kill millions upon millions of people doing so. And then they live happily ever after (or as long as they can ever after together, because of the whole Mayfly–December Romance thing)).

Marty Stus, or no?

edited 12th Apr '11 8:49:26 PM by OhSoIntoCats

I have no idea whether they're Stus or not. I'd have to read it myself, which is the point that this thread has been belaboring for several pages. You can't identify a Sue/Stu just by reading a bunch of traits in a 8 line or so paragraph.

Anyway, there's no way you can pull that thing off without some Refuge in Audacity to begin with, so I wouldn't worry too much.

edited 12th Apr '11 9:45:17 PM by nrjxll

Well Jesus, I'm sorry.

It's all nerves because this is the first thing I've written that practically eats and breathes Refuge in Audacity. I think Sueism and that can get mixed up sometimes.

Perhaps that's the point. Where's the line between Refuge in Audacity / Refuge in Cool and a Mary Sue. Is it when the reader gets annoyed? All of the audacity/cool is focused on one character?

edited 12th Apr '11 9:56:22 PM by OhSoIntoCats

Whoa dude, paragraph breaks. Or bullet points.

Has no one any comments on my thoughts on the devil as a character? .___.

edited 12th Apr '11 10:40:19 PM by melloncollie

Oops.

I think it doesn't seem like a Wall of Text to me because of the screen resolution :/

Well, as I see it there's two main points of difference. First, Refuge in Audacity usually includes at least a few knowing winks to the audience along the lines of "yeah, this is over the top, but why do you care?" Stories with a Mary Sue, on the other hand, rarely if ever do so.

However, the bigger difference is what I was getting at before: people keep associating Mary Sues with all the secondary characteristics they might have, completely missing the point that what truly makes a Sue is the amount of author favoritism they receive. Your protagonist could be a katana-wielding cyborg Physical God who has women swarm him like flies and single-handedly saves the world twice a day, without being a Sue at all (or even a parodic character like The Ace). It's all in how much you treat them like a real person versus a thinly veiled form of Wish-Fulfillment.

While it may not really have anything to do with sues, I find the whole technicolored eye thing annoying when it's not presented as a normal trait in the 'verse. Even though the trait in and of itself may not make the character a mary sue, there are still so many characters out there with this trait that we wonder why, if the trait is so uncommon, so many main characters have it. For many of the traits, it's the same thing — it's not that the trait is inherently bad, it's more that, because the trait is so uncommon yet common in fiction it gets grating to read about.

Also, I can't find your post about the devil as a character, but I would assume that such a character would have similar problems I'm having with my Nyarl Jr — as in, they're one-of-a-kind and ridiculously overpowered compared to everyone around them (perhaps less so in the case of the devil, if pious thoughts/deeds and holy artifacts work against him than a Humanoid Abomination), and God help you if you want to make the character sympathetic major characters.

No seriously, I looked through this whole thread and cannot find it :/

edited 12th Apr '11 10:46:47 PM by OhSoIntoCats

...er, I didn't try to hide it or anything o__O

Yeah, mortals do win against him sometimes. I think in most of the storylines he's in he has a pyrrhic victory.

I guess if there was something I should worry about, is that I probably identify too much with him. Which I hear is the big decisive issue with Sues.

It's one of the issues, but authors successfully write characters they identify with all the time. Sue happens when the writer doesn't give them real challenges or setbacks.

A brighter future for a darker age.

As for your idea on Satan, well, considering I'm not Christian I probably have different ideas on what Satan "should" be like versus what most people do. I mean, are you playing him as anti-God, constantly being punished by God, being God's advisor...?

edited 13th Apr '11 5:51:21 AM by OhSoIntoCats

^ Ah. He's more like the naughty kid who runs away to live in a gutter (places that are not heaven), and the gutter is miserable most of the time so he blames the parent for making him run away.

What I'm unsure about is why he ran away. Currently the reason is that God showed him his future that he would be exiled from heaven forever, and it became a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Not sure if that makes Satan a little too justified, though.

^^ Whew, good to know. I still don't know about the setbacks thing, though. Many Sues experience a lot of hardship.

True, Mary Sues can have hardships, but from what I've heard, the problem usually comes when all the hardships are someone else's fault or just fate and she never suffers from her own mistakes if she makes any at all. Thus a "sympathetic" Sue because the character suffers despite being treated as never doing wrong by the story. The wish fulfillment in this case is something like "I want to just be told nothing's my fault and get all the sympathy and never have to think about any mistakes I made."

edited 13th Apr '11 8:49:08 AM by Rainbow

Isn't the usual narrative that Satan rebelled or something? I don't know, you could make them both justified because both he and God are assholes. Also, there's always being the stupid rebellious teenager who runs away and realizes they can never really go home again — but if you want Satan to inspire any sort of unholy awe whatsoever, that's probably not a good idea, because that's pretty damn pathetic.

^^ Roger that.

^ Satan does rebel, that's the self-fulfilling part of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. It's the motive that I'm questioning.

I think this is getting off-topic from the purpose of this thread though, so I'll let other people have the thread ^__^;

@ Rainbow back up there on the Mary Sue Valley, lol.

Anyway, favoritism isn't good when you take it to the extreme. It is one thing to care for your characters, but you got to use them to get somewhere/kill them off/have them die eventually. Unless of course they live to the end of the story.

Still, that valley is my favorite. The 50 foot waterfall there is really awesome to hang at.

as of the 2nd of Nov. has 6 weeks for a broken collar bone to heal and types 1 handed and slowly

Hurm. I don't think favoritism translates to your character's lifespan, necessarily. They might go like Kurt Cobain, but in an indulgent, glorified way