In which I compare common Mary-Sue tropes to my current character.

I'm not offended that my character, named Sarah, is pretty much a Mary-Sue. This is just for fun, and you can call me out on hypocrisy. Edit: This is the page I'm using. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CommonMarySueTraits

Personality: Ill-defined, possibly.

She's extremely persuasive: check. She claims she's not trying to use her mind-control powers to make everyone go along with her, but people have trouble resisting her. Whether or not the universe punishes people for disregarding her advice is random.

She has risked her life and sanity for others, though generally not for strangers. She is also incredibly forgiving of Archimedes, who doesn't follow normal-people morality. Sarah has also deliberately tried to corrupt herself because she was convinced that others' morality was more important than her own, but it didn't work.

Dark and troubled past: A bit. She was "eat every day" trailer trash. She's also all of the other reindeer and a bit of abuse by her teachers, but she's pretty casual about mentioning it, like it doesn't matter much. She has a mild berzerk button about children being hurt, especially children who don't fit in.

I'm not sure if she has any truly inconvenient flaws. She's even gotten over her fear of permanently dying. (She has temporarily died at least twice.) She's described at having trouble telling right from wrong in the context of the world, especially when she's trying to juggle multiple points of view in an attempt to not seem like an asshole.

Skills: Poorly-defined. Not sure if having things come up when they're plot-relevant is necessarily a bad thing.

Other than mind-control powers (not unique in the universe) and a believable vampire power package (she's actually missing some gifts she should have, like shapeshifting) her only remarkable talent is being the best flyer of her type, and there is another type of flyer that's generally better. She does sing, but there's no comment on the quality. She's not a virgin, and she's only described as okay in bed. She's trilingual but has trouble communicating in English because of her slang, justified because she had a century with nothing better to do to learn two other languages. There was also the time when a character mistakenly believes that she can have full conversations with her cat, but that's cleared up quickly as just her being weird.

Physical Appearance: I don't think I spend much time on it. She's blue-eyed blonde when she's human, the blonde part is still hanging from the dark part when she's a vampire, but she has green eyes when they should have turned yellow. She's abnormally short for the universe but believable by Earth standards, and I might have forgotten to describe that part. She's actually described as physically weak for a vampire.

She doesn't scar. She is a hybrid vampire with the idea that there could be more like her if they tried duplicating the process. She has wings, but that's a trait inherited from one of her sires and there's no physical indication that she has two sires. It doesn't come up much, but a standard power is being able to disguise her appearance. Other than not having all of the powers she should have inherited from one sire, she's probably more advantaged overall. This is from a different site, but she was 23 when she was turned, which is considered too young.

Accessories:

She temporarily serves as a Pillar Guardian, which comes with a binding token. Justified in-universe but it might leave a sour taste in people's mouths. No special weapons mentioned even though she should own a decent sword. She didn't bring anything from her world except her clothes, not even her purse, but her mental powers allow her to be a music/movie player. The web does not exist everywhere, but eventually she gets ahold of the technology to access a wikipedia download.

Relationships:

The romance hasn't been explored much. If I haven't managed realism, hopefully I've made it either fun or funny in the ways it keeps not working out perfectly. One character denies liking her because she doesn't seem to like him that way. One character developed a revulsion for her, another cycles between hatred, tolerance, and begrudging friendship. One problem is that characters do keep talking about Sarah, but the conversation is usually negative or neutral. She did redeem a villain to the point where he gave permission for her to mind-control him the rest of the way.

Story Elements:

Pretty much the beginning of the story hinged on her. I need to find places where another character could replace her for important plot points, but her main power is that the rules of the universe don't apply to her, and she's pretty tightly woven in to parts that don't rely on her main power. She's referred to as a dangerous force of chaos and a destiny breaker once they figure it out. The Chosen One would have been fine without her help. She's actually referred-to in-universe as a blithe spirit by someone who found T Vtropes, and I have a scene planned where they discover what a Mary Sue is. Her being from Earth is a major point more than once.

The most disturbing thing is that she has committed an atrocity. It took two years and a push from a goddess to get one character to even start talking to her again, but she's not really being punished enough. Other vampires are excused for doing that sort of thing, but Sarah still tries to pretend she has some sort of moral high ground and is clinging to humanity even as she admits to doing normal vampire things like losing count of how many people she's eaten.

She spent time as a Pillar Guardian and a Jester, and being the servant of a Guardian isn't much of a step down, so better than a princess. She redeemed a villain, is rumored to make vampires less monstrous just by talking to them, and blames herself for one character going insane.

Name:

Sarah Taylor from Taylorsville. The rest of the significance is somewhat accidental.

Presentation: I think I balanced her in the story with everyone else. She is talked about way too often, though a lot of it is griping by sympathetic characters.

Author investment in the Character: I'm not going to be honestly objective about this one. I have yet to build a shrine, but it is pretty bad.

Edited by Kelekona on Aug 11th 2020 at 10:47:08 AM

This sort of threads arent kosher. Not due to the Mary Sue thing but rather you want a whole thread to talk solely about your character.