Needs Help: Mary Sue

Okay, this thread might be an entirely bad idea, but here we go.

-deep breath-

Mary Sue and most of its subtypes have become a term so contested and debatable, it becomes increasingly difficult to nail it down. The term is thrown around incredibly lightly, and has slowly but surely been decaying into "let's call any character I don't like this".

Back when the pages still had examples, they attracted quite a lot of natter, bile and Edit Wars, if the archived discussion is to be believed. Although that's over with, the wicks are still a problem. Especially Villain Sue, is literally thrown around at any increasingly powerful villain. This causes rather heated debates.

As such, I propose we classify the Mary Sue and its subtypes as Flame Bait, and restrict their use only to fanfiction and not original works.

edited 23rd Mar '12 12:18:43 PM by lu127

That was already tried without success

That seems like a sound proposition. Mary Sue is one of those terms that's safer kept to defining then ascribing.

I agree with Lu.

Also, I don't think we need to treat fanfiction and original works differently. By the way, in original work a Mary Sue is called Canon Sue.

And that is something no fans of any work will ever agree on. Whether a character is a Canon Sue, I mean.

Examples of Mary Sue subtropes seem like Complaining About Characters You Dont Like too many times IMO. Especially, like Lu has already said, Villain Sue. Extremely powerful villain =/= Villain Sue.

Canon Sue is really flame bait whenever it's thrown around. It's possible to point out Mary Sues in fanfic and the like, but we might not want to go down that route.

I'd support marking the Sue tropes flame bait and then coloring the dot for flame bait tropes differently. I don't think we need any exceptions for fan-derived works.

Whatever we do, we probably need to clean up wicks and keep the Sue tropes to just YMMV pages and the like.

Are there any objective criteria to any Mary Sue "trope" besides They Are Bad?

@Autumncomet, there is no label for Flame Bait, but an open Tech Wishlist thread with suggestiosn for it. If we really go for making this Flame Bait, we might as well get these proposals done.

Mary Sue is already YMMV. It's still a magnet for edit warring either way.

Well, they are extremely unbelievable and unrealistic, plus they exist for Wish-Fulfillment.

edited 23rd Mar '12 12:31:29 PM by lu127

The Sue tropes being YMMV doesn't stop people from adding them to work and character pages.

Common Mary Sue Traits has a list of things most commonly associated with Sues. I don't think it's one thing as much as it is certain characteristics that exist in a character without a good in-story explanation.

Do Mary Sue items attract disproportionately more edit warring than standard YMMV items?

I'd say yes, when they are added. It causes near Creator's Pet levels of arguments.

And Creator's Pet isn't as vague as most Mary Sue subtropes are. The edit wars there are just a result of people not reading the Trope description.

The description of most Mary Sue subtropes are kinda ambiguous and vague.

edited 23rd Mar '12 12:40:00 PM by kay4today

The only "Sue" trope that I've been able to nail any sort of concrete definition for (but not objective, of course) is Black Hole Sue. A Black Hole Sue is a character that the plot revolves around, established logic or canon rearranges itself for, and/or causes characters to behave off the rails of established characterization. In other words, they're a vortex that affects everything that they're even tangentially involved in.

I think that most of the defs for the various Sues need rewriting so that they don't come out as a Wall of Text. And maybe split parts of the descriptions off to Analysis.

In agreement with Zeal, although I have to note that I've rarely seen any character I would call a Black Hole Sue in any original work.

Sounds good to me.

Sasuke Uchiha.

Wow, this has way too many wicks for such a nebulous concept.

Also, the various subtypes seem to be misused. I see a lot of Villain Sue potholing when it should be Generic Doomsday Villain instead.

Nebulous=/=Don't Use It, especially if some think it means a license to attack something they don't like (regardless of whether the reasons are legitimate).

It is a strong preexisting term after all. 30k inbounds.

Yeah, you can't assume that every one of those wicks is used as "Character X in this popular work is a Mary Sue" or a pothole with the same intent. There are many different times where a Wiki Word of a common term is used on the wiki, not just Flame Bait situations.

True, but given how nebulous, contested and ill-defined it is, most of its use seems to boil down to misuse, bile and Complaining About Characters You Dont Like.

Oh, but it is. Most of the time.

edited 23rd Mar '12 1:35:46 PM by lu127

In this case, I would just remove or shift all the Mary Sue examples, give the Mary Sue Tropes actually usable descriptions (split off the Analysis and create a true description), possibly even redefining them to make them less complainy, then clean them up.