Archived Discussion

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Working Title: Purity Sue: From YKTTW

Ethereal Mutation: Does anyone have any objection to some of this old discussion being deleted/moved to an archive? This page is just a little too unwieldy.

Mackenzie Blaise from Tales Of MU. While the author is careful to give her various negative qualities, they come off as more ass-covering for the rather long list of other blatantly Sue-ish traits the character has. She's ridiculously modest to the point of being self-deprecating about her appearance, prompting all of her friends to tell her how ridiculously sexy she is. Everyone she meets either wants to be her friend or just plain wants her (either overtly or covertly), and the only people who don't like her are portrayed as complete (usually bigoted) jerkasses. She's got a tragic past that gets brought up at the drop of a hat, superpowers, a loyal posse of elves and nymphs and so on, defies an unjust society with no real repercussions other than some rumormongering and grumbling, and in general follows every trope of a stereotypical Mary Sue except for her table manners and the occasional slap-on-the-wrist version of a What the Hell, Hero?.

Mekhet: I'm sorry, I hate to be the internet cheerleader for Tales of MU</obvious lie>, but Mackenzie doesn't belong on this list. Her "various negative traits" include terrible hygiene, zero interpersonal skills, kneejerk religious intolerance, and a Dexterity score of 0, all of which combine to make her the Butt-Monkey of her own story. Her friends call her on her own Jerkass traits all the time, and yes, a lot of them want to jump her bones, but half the campus hates her and the ones who like her are conscious of her faults. The ones who hate her do come off less sympathetic, but it's her POV. She hasn't had any real repercussions for 'defying an unjust society' but she hasn't been thrown a parade either. The story has maybe three people who think the sun shines out of her ass: her girlfriend, her best friend, and her surrogate sister. The fact that the people who like her the best hang out with her the most does not a Sue make. Even then, none of them think she's perfect and they aren't shy about it.

There have been two or three chapters devoted to showing what a shit writer the character is and how she doesn't know it. Where's the Sue?

Rebochan: Why exactly is Micaiah here? This is *exactly* the kind of Flanderization this trope has gone through - any female character you don't like can be turned into a Mary Sue so you have a justification for it. Same for The Doctor's Daughter - before the episode even aired, people were screaming for her Mary Sue head and started keeping a checklist of silly reasons why she was a Canon Sue so they could rant about it later.

Willy Four Eyes: Agreed, and deleted. Squishy Wizards, by definition, cannot be Mary Sues, because Mary Sue is perfect.

DieHard: Gameplay and Story Segregation means that actual things such as stats in combat really don't impact on potential Sue status. Also, it's not that Mary Sue is "perfect" so much as the plot seems to think so. As for that particular example itself, I have no opinion either way because I haven't played the game.

Rebochan: The plot didn't think she was perfect, so she's not a Sue. She's very important to the plot, but by that standard, any character that is important to a plot is a Sue. A lot of people just don't like her because she's a really crappy unit that you're forced to use during most of the game. It doesn't make her a Sue, just a crappy unit.

Rebochan: Exactly - of course, if she *was* perfect, I doubt many people would complain about her too much. I mean, most of the lords in the series are walking death machines - which should make them Sues, but they are forgiven by the fact that everyone is glad to have one on their team.

Danel: I agree with this - the Canon Sue examples continue to pollute all of these fine and shiny new tropes with their awfulness. Nonetheless, I've removed the natter after the Doctor's Daughter example - despite agreeing with it wholeheartedly:

How in the world does this count as a Mary Sue except that she's cheerful and the lead character's clone daughter? Wasn't the whole point of the episode whether or not she even counted as his daughter?

I would also like to remove the Doctor's Daughter example entirely, but I have no desire to start an Edit War. The core of it to me is that the story is less about her, and more about the Doctor and what this all means to him. Thoughts? Oh, and also, removed this because it's just ridiculous, and appears to suggest that this character counts as a Purity Sue largely by being the main character.

Carly Shay in iCarly is at least a borderline Purity Sue, as Carly is not only the focus of the show, but shown to be beautiful, smart, and popular (even amongst her teachers).
- Not to mention that she seems to be able to maintain a popular webshow every week without negative response.

Rebochan: I can understand pulling the natter. I think we should pull the entry anyway though - she's not even close to perfect, which pulls her right out of Sue status. The story was not about her and how perfect and amazing she was, but about the Doctor, which further saves her from Suedom. Then she goes down from a perfectly ordinary bullet and the whole symbolism thing wasn't because she died, it was because of something the Doctor, the star of the show, did. Then her Disney Death wasn't a Deus ex Machina, it was done to establish how much Time Lord DNA she actually had. She's only being considered a Sue because she's female.

Okay, I pulled it. We'll see what happens. The point stands.

Ninjacrat: I don't know what category she should go under (who knew a character type could be so thoroughly dissected?), but Jenny definitely outghta be on one of those Sue pages: Introduced from nowhere with a special relation to the lead character, a whole episode spent drooling over how physically competent yet peaceful yet badass yet innocent yet instinctively moral yet sexy yet independant yet caring she is, dies saving the Doctor from a bullet, mourned by everybody, comes back to life for more ~~spinoffs~~ adventures. The whole character reeked of something created by a group of horny 40-something executives trying to be 'hip' to 'the buffy generation'.

Danel: Mary Sue Traits do not make a Mary Sue. She's created by the Applied Phlebotinum of that episode, which is also important to the rest of the plot; most of which, in any case, isn't about her. The episode is far more about the Doctor, and what his reaction might be, than it is about her in any case. She has to be Awesome because, as everyone knows, Awesome is genetic, and without it she'd just seem like a really poor copy. She dies because the Doctor just isn't allowed to have nice things, and having a cheerful relative and fellow Time Lord might start to mend his angst, which is forbidden.

But you raise a point that concerns about these new tropes - for all that, I'm not sure that all Mary Sues fit neatly into one of these boxes, and stretching them will be problematic indeed.

Clerval: Can't it just be a case of Tropes Are Not Bad? Or a Mary Sue that doesn't grate because she's kept just a little to the edge of centre-stage? I rather thought they were dissecting the trope or even experimenting to see if they could make it work. Because she did tick virtually every box to the point that in concept she sounded like something out of a bad fanfic. Yes she had to be "awesome", but she was awesome in a very cheesy, generic, and indeed un-Doctorlike way (sassy, big boobs, backflips, gun). But in execution, she was... okay.

Ninjacrat: Danel- I wasn't meaning to hang her on her traits. There's nothing wrong with being omnicompetent and sexy. Just ask Captain Jack! Or the Doctor. It was the episode's worshipful hands-of-ham attitude towards her that pushed her into Suedom. I'd call the Doctor at the end of "Family of Blood" the same way: having the villains rapturously declaring how powerful he is even as he's striking them down was pushing the boat out a bit far. :)

It seems to me that we really oughta catalogue Sue stories rather than characters. But after one big reorganistion already, I'm sure as hell not suggesting that...

Rebochan: But the story *wasn't* about how awesome she was and I saw no plot-worship of her. The story was about the Doctor and his reactions to her. Remember how rough he was on her for just being a clone? He was perfectly happy to leave her in prison just to be rid of her if Donna hadn't been so insistent on reminding him of his "preserve life" clause. Plus he *really* didn't like her being a soldier because of his own issues with his past. This is the thing, if she were a Sue, these moments would not be about the Doctor, they would be about how amazing and pure Jenny was and how much the Doctor and everyone except the purest of evil loves her and she'd take out both armies on her own, blah blah blah. Mary Sue does not play supporting character.

Clerval: I thought it was kind of two-way Sue-ing. As in, see the Doctor's angst! Waaah! See poor, pretty, hyper-capable Jenny abused for something that's clearly unfair and not her fault! Waah! And he comes round pretty quickly, converted in part by her awesome backflipping, allowing her to dies heroically in the "canon" hero's arms before resurrecting with a ludicrously perky "Hello boys!" before zooming off to have Doctor-ish adventures of her own. I say again, I found her surprisingly tolerable, I'm cautiously optimistic about seeing her again but I just can't see her as not-a-Sue, at least not yet. I know Mary Sue traits don't always make the Sue, but she had SO MANY of those traits and wasn't around long enough to manifest many others. Mary Sue CAN play supporting character, in a way - particularly if she's playing the support to a very very established hero and is suddenly more important to him than anyone else in the room.

Rebochan: First of all, if the Doctor is now a Mary Sue, we had better just call it quits on this trope and declare any lead character in fiction that is not a total useless loser a Mary Sue.

Second, he warmed up to her because Donna convinced him to. But he still didn't treat her like the most important person there. Oh, and she back flipped *once* through a tunnel of lasers. She didn't use amazing super powers after that, nor did she overshadow everyone around her with her awesomeness. And if she's the Doctor's genetic daughter in a series that (especially by the end) was concerned with many different ways of expressing and delving into the concept of regeneration and how it works, how is it Mary Sue like that she used established continuity in her resurrection?

Finally, how can Mary Sue be a supporting character? Mary Sue, by definition, is the center of the universe. A supporting character is not.

Clerval Come on, no one has to save the day with heroic backflipping repeatedly for it to raise an eyebrow, especially not if they're the lovely inserted daughter of the lead and they top it off with sacrificial death. As for "why WOULDN't she resurrect?" well - by not being written to sacrifice herself in the first place, for one. And she didn't even do it in the established way by regenerating into something else, so I'm not even sure quite what the mechanism is supposed to be there. I don't really see how Donna's advocacy makes a difference, he hardly accepted Jenny just to keep Donna happy, it was her continued proof of wonderfulness that did the trick, leading to his concluding she was "too much like me" (the hero of a forty-year-old franchise). And to me, it seemed that she did indeed very much overshadow everyone around her with her awesomeness. And it depends on what you mean by supporting. In the story of "Finding out what's happening on this planet" she played a major, but not the major role. But clearly the story was really "The Doctor gets a daughter", to which she was central by definition.

As for the Doctor, he didn't use to be, but any belief I had that RTD wasn't hellbent on Sueifying him evaporated when he did this. And then this. They turned Jack into a endlessly Christ-posturing Sympathy Sue too, so it's not as if the team hasn't got form.

Rebochan: Donna made the Doctor accept Jenny, not because she was "wonderful", but because he was treating her like shit. Things like making him listening for two hearts, not letting him leave the girl to rot in prison or be executed...But as soon as she backflips (ONCE!), she's a Sue with magical special wonderness? The "too much like me" line was not about how Jenny was his physical and mental equal, but simply her moral outlook punctuated with a strong concept of self-sacrifice that led to her taking a bullet for him. And that wasn't even by her nature alone, it was because she studied the Doctor through her brief life and mimiced him. She was perfectly willing to gun down anyone in her way before, and at the start of the episode, if someone pointed a gun at the Doctor, she would have just shot the interloper or broken his neck, not taken the bullet in the Doctor's place. It's a moment of character development, not a Sueriffic self-sacrifice. Oh yea, and she's practically a redshirt for taking that bullet too. Bad guy points a gun, who's going to eat the bullet? The main characters who are signed on for the entire series, or the new girl who's only signed on for one episode? Mary Sue is not a redshirt.

Finally, Mary Sue is not merely a character that is important to the story she is in (supporting or main). She is the *center of the universe*. Jenny is only a Mary Sue if every single companion in the history of Doctor Who is.

Clerval: The bad guy was written to point the gun to facilitate the heroic sacrifice! They hardly wrote "gun aimed at Doctor" and then thought "Oh no, how shall we get him out of this? Quick, put that random whatshername in the way - it's all I can think of". And backflipping once? she did about twenty in a scene that, again, specifically set up to highlight that particular "awesome" trait. But it's clear we can't agree. I can, sort of, accept story focus as being a disqualifier, but in all other respects it just seems to walk like a duck to me. I certainly don't think all companions are Mary Sues.

Rebochan: I saw it as more of a "Oh no, the Doctor has someone who can make him happy. We need to kill her before that happens!" The Doctor cannot have nice things. That's the point of the new series. Personally, I hope she comes back just because the last two series were almost relentless in beating the tar out of the poor guy.

Drow Lord: In order to avoid giving in to the temptation and posting a Justifying Edit (or, if I'm ever in a bad mood, erasing it completely), I'll voice my complaint here.

Tohru Honda from Fruits Basket, as depicted in the anime. She remains eternally cheerful despite her tragic past, and the other members of the Sohma house look to her for guidance, as they all have problems of their own. The manga makes her quite more fleshed out, since her eternally cheerful disposition is actually a mask for her own abandonment issues.

She's an extremely friendly, approachable, and patient person, who tends to help other people get over their own screwed-up pasts. There's another, better trope that describes this. Hell, even if one assumes the fact that she's a Sue anyway (I disagree entirely, but I can see the other side, at least), then she's only a Canon Sue. "Eternal cheerfulness" is her only purity sueish trait. She's also extremely gullible (something Hiro and Shigure both love taking advantage of) and not terribly bright. Not to mention her selflessness is also occasionally treated as double-edged, since she's rather reluctant to "burden" others with her own problems. This is much more prevalent in the manga, of course, but even in the anime, there's the whole "living in a tent" thing, and her insistence that Yuki and Kyo spend New Years with the Sohma family and not worry about her (unspoken: while she stays at home, alone for the first New Years holiday ever, and cries).

...screw it. I'm pulling the entry. It's a cut-and-paste from Canon Sue, anyway, so let's leave it over there.

bluefireglow: Big props to whoever put Lucie Manette here! I was consistently infuriated by her when I had to read A Tale Of Two Cities in highschool but never really thought of applying the term Mary Sue to her.

Shay Guy: Thanks! I was actually inspired by my memory of the Cliffs Notes:

Book 2, Chapter 6 commentary: Dickens also makes clear to the reader that Lucie serves as the emotional center of the novel. Earlier in the book, he described her as a “golden thread” running through the Doctor’s life and keeping him sane. Similarly, in this chapter, Dickens states that “everything turned upon her and revolved about her,” suggesting that her sphere of influence extends beyond her father and encompasses all who come in contact with her. Lucie’s effect on people indicates that she is the golden thread running through the entire novel. She possesses some quality that draws people to her and inspires them to be more than they are; for instance, her father has become more than a shoemaking prisoner, and Mr. Lorry has become more than a businessman. Similarly, Darnay and Carton both appear to be courting Lucie, demonstrating a desire to advance their lives from bachelorhood to marriage. As the book progresses, her influence on them will become evident in increasingly dramatic ways.
Making Lucie — a rather two-dimensional character — so central to the book may seem strange, but keep in mind that Dickens created Lucie to be an ideal rather than a real woman. She represents all that is good in humanity — innocence, kindness, faith, and hope — and she serves as a touchstone for other characters to find those qualities within themselves.

Character analysis: Dickens describes Lucie as being beautiful physically and spiritually, and she possesses a gift for bringing out the best qualities of those around her. She is one of the lesser-developed characters in the novel, but she is “the golden thread” that binds many of the characters’ lives together. A reader can best judge Lucie by her actions and influences on other characters rather than by her dialogue, which tends to be melodramatic and full of stock sentimentality. Her dialogue aside, Dickens portrays her as a compassionate, virtuous woman who inspires great love and loyalty in the other characters. For example, Darnay, Carton, and Stryver all court her and envision their futures being made brighter with her as their wife. Additionally, both Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, who are without families, love Lucie as if she were their daughter and do everything they can to keep her safe. Although Lucie is a flat character, she is an important one. She represents unconditional love and compassion, and Dickens uses her to demonstrate how powerful these qualities can be, even in the face of violence and hatred.

Women in A Tale of Two Cities: As the “golden thread” that binds the lives of Doctor Manette, Mr. Lorry, Darnay, and Carton together [here's the part I recalled!], Lucie is a passive character who influences others through who she is rather than by what she does.

Lale:

May Alcott died quite early in life *and* was the mother of LMA's niece/protegée Louisa aka "Lulu", for whom Alcott wrote Lulu's Library.

But May was still alive when both parts of Little Women were written and published.

Willy Four Eyes: Sorry...calling shenanigans on Ryoko Asakura. Shouldn't the fact that she went crazy and tried to kill Kyon, and Yuki had to subsequently pwn her disqualify her from this trope?

Lale: She disguised herself as this trope.

Drow Lord: That's enough? As someone else pointed out, Mary Sue traits don't necessarily make a Sue, let alone Ryoko's (the most realistic Sue traits possible; seriously, people, it's possible for someone to be popular, beautiful, and caring at the same time). I have serious doubts that she even qualifies as a subversion (which would imply that she was intended to be taken as a Mary Sue). Seriously, she's closer to something else (but doesn't fit that entirely, either).

Pulling it...but if someone else puts it back in, I'll drop it.

Smokie: The problem in my opinion is, there is no other trope that would describe her outside that accurate as Purity Sue. She's not just a Yamato Nadeshiko. She's absolutely perfect in every way. Of course, I agree that a Sue-disguise doesn't make a sue. But has that ever stopped anyone from shoehorning examples into the sue-pages?

Rebochan: She's a Yandere, which covers what you're describing about her.

Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: cut this and left it here. She may be a Mary Sue, but a Purity Sue shouldn't have an evil vamp mode.

The Undead series by Mary Janice Davidson features a stunningly gorgeous Friendly Neighborhood Vampire who not only possess Barbie-like good looks and what the author wants to come across as Buffy-like wit, but is in fact Queen of the Vampires — which means that she doesn't have those pesky drawbacks that make vampires Scary Monsters rather than Super Heroes. By the end of the third book she is unaffected by sunlight, able to toss crosses and holy water around, and is completely so unrelatable, even despite having no other entertainment on a 5-hour car ride.
- Betsy is somewhat tempered by the fact that even her best friend and her love interest find her dense, self-centered and exasperating (and tell her so, repeatedly). Not to mention Sinclair's Lancer/Baroness kicks her ass with little effort, despite the fact that she'd been possessed by the Vampire Necronomicon and was in full evil vamp mode.

[Much later] Cut and moved this. This isn't a Purity Sue, though it may be a God-Mode Sue.

Lacus Clyne had some traits, but these increased exponentially in Gundam SEED Destiny, when just about everyone else suffered Character Derailment too. Not only is she a famous Idol Singer known for her singing and able to take over the reins of a ship with little or no training beforehand (though with her dad being an ex-member of the PLANTS Council, it's likely she already knew at least the basics by book), but she's thought to be based off the wife of the creator (who many accuse of basing Kira Yamato off of himself) but in Destiny she basically ends up as the leader of all the PLANTS at 18 years old. Effectively, Lacus now runs the world.
- However, Lacus' Sue-ness is deconstructed through Meer Campbell, her Stripperiffic Body Double. Originally a Lacus Fangirl with the voice of an angel, Meer suffers from a pathologically low self-esteem that causes her to want to continue posing as Lacus as well as her fake relationship with Athrun even though she knows that Durandal is wrong, for she fears no one will love her as Meer. The emotional and mental strain causes Meer to go borderline insane and try to seduce Athrun directly and to start claiming she is the real Lacus (and is encouraged by some of her entourage members. What the Hell, Sarah). When Meer does come back to her senses, after Lacus meets up with her and talks her out of it (but not before Meer actually explains herself and gives Lacus a nice call-out for going into retirement when people still needed her), she ends up Taking the Bullet for Lacus and dying, traumatising Lacus out of guilt and pain.

[Much later] Cut and moved this from the interior of an entry. Even if she is more of a Mary Sue, she sounds like a Villain Sue. (Divider added by me.)

This troper thinks that Mayo Sakaki from the Eikoden novels and OAV's is more of a Mary Sue than Miaka could ever be; Miaka doesn't get scot free for her flaws (punishments go from running gags to very serious misunderstandings and problems including the death of several of her Seishi and her feud with Yui) and has made very bad decisions that bite her and others in the ass, while Mayo turns almost everyone in the book against Miaka easily, lies repeteadly, "steals" Miaka's unborn baby girl Hikari and is this close to killing both baby and mother by erasing them from existence, almost causes the end of two worlds... and practically doesn't get any punishment.
- On the other hand, she's not supposed to be the villain of the story, she's the heroine. Which really speaks volumes for Eikoden, to be honest.
  - Upon further reflection, that doesn't make her a Mary Sue, but it does qualify her for Karma Houdini and Designated Hero status.

Rebochan: Pulled Belldandy - once again, people, there has to be a plot bias towards the character and a necessity that everyone love her. And when your show is called "Ah! My Goddess!", I don't think it makes you a Mary Sue when you're, you know, a freaking goddess.

I really want to pull Wonder Woman too, but I'm holding back because of how much is actually written there. At best, she's a parallel of Superman - some writers put her in realistic terms, and some writers totally screw up and turn her into one of these. Which would actually qualify her as God-Mode Sue, but nevermind.

Cassy: I put the Ah My Goddess example back, as I really don't get your point. How does Belldandy's identity as a goddess prevent from being a quasi-archetypal Purity Sue who fits the trope description to a T except for her occasional bouts of jealousy? Are goddess characters somehow exempted from being MarySues or, you know, from fitting into tropes? Funny when you consider that Uld and Skuld from the same manga and anime have personalities pretty much unlike Belldandy's and unlike what your idea of a prototypical goddess seems to be. So your argument just seems to indicate that Belldandy's Purity Sue-ness is a Justified Trope due to her being the main goddess character (which I still find a questionable argument but nevermind), and you would have to find a good argument to convince me that she doesn't fit the trope discussed here as a fictional character in a fictional work.

Rebochan: To be a Mary Sue, there has to be an overriding plot bias that makes her the center of the universe. She isn't. Therefore, not a Mary Sue. Having super-special awesome powers can be a Sue trait, but having Sue traits does not make one a Sue. And seriously, do they have to be wrist-slitting psychopaths before they're not considered "too perky"?

Oh, and things like jealousy and dangerous naivety? Those are not "Sue" flaws. "Sue" flaws are being too perfect for this sinful earth. Sue flaws are being so beautiful that they have too much attention. Sue flaws are being so kind that they can never be everywhere they are needed. In other words, Cursed with Awesome to the point of inducing vomiting from the audience.

Orihime: The Movie actually treats Belldandy's supposed "faux flaws" as *real* ones, so that could count as a deconstruction. Added that, but I'm this close to deletwe the whole Belldanyd entry as it hits me as people YET AGAIN using Belldandy's Yamato Nadeshiko traits to BASH her for commiting the crime of not being more of a Tsundere or for daring to be an icon for male fans. (I've met people who say that bullshit about not only Belldandy, but about almost any more traditionally feminine charas in Real Life, so I Am Not Making This Up)

OverMaster: I think your liking for the Yamato Nadeshiko archetype is getting the best of you. We don't bash Belldandy because she isn't a Tsundere, or an icon. We 'bash' her because we honestly think she takes things way too far in the opposite direction. Just deal with it and respect others' opinions before going deleting-happy.

Rebochan: Your opinions on Belldandy are fine, but being a Yamato Nadeshiko doesn't elevate her to Mary Sue status just because you hate her. Deleted again, especially because the character has flaws that immediately disqualify her from the trope.

Rebochan: Lovely, it's turned into an edit war.

Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: removed the Cruel Intentions example because, rather than being heavily subverted Purity Sues, the two leads are VillainProtagonists with good publicity.

Massively subverted in Cruel Intentions, in which both the male and female leads enjoyed pristine reputations with authority figures but in reality made their way by wanton sexual manipulation, including with each other (a knowingly nearly incestuous affair). At the end, the boy dies and everyone does go to his funeral...but his girlfriend uses the occasion and his parting gift of a tell-all personal diary to destroy the girl's life.

Ethereal Mutation: Moved this here, since Alice got a better explanation in God-Mode Sue and the other part is just a one sentence, no-context bit of crap.

Rebecca became one of these in the Resident Evil novels. Even moreso is Alice from the Resident Evil movies, a genetically enhanced psychic amnesiac whose origins and fate become the center of attention to the exclusion of the ideas and characters of the game series itself. The zombie apocalypse storyline is little more than a backdrop by the second film, which conveniently wraps up the plot of the original Resi games. This frees up the entire third film to deal with Alice. A cynic would suggest that the writer was just using the Resi licence as the chance to get his tedious sci-fi adventure mish-mash on film. We're not cynics, though, so we reckon it probably has more to do with the writer's fiance starring as Alice.

Fast Eddie: Deleted hotlinked image. Please see Administrative Policy. Sorry I can't help with the edit war. Not familiar with 'Ah My Goddess'.'

Rebochan: The edit war seems to have ended, and I put the image back up after putting it on the tvtropes server so it's no longer hotlinked.

Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here, though (unfortunately) not before I edited it. There are too many caveats with Sora; and as for the other—does it count as a Sue if it's another character's idealization and it's not in a [[Show Within a Show work within a work?]

A deconstruction of the Purity Sue is found in Kaleido Star. Sora Naegino is a charismatic, acrobatics-skilled Genki Girl who's gentle to the point of being an Extreme Doormat sometimes, can see the Lovable Sex Maniac Spirit of the Stage which means she's The Chosen One, is almost always cheerful and thinking of her unchangeable, unyielding dream even in the darkest hour... but (and these "buts" are very important):
- Her technical abilities aren't on par with the seasoned performers of the Kaleido Stage, having only received gym training at school - so she's often subjected to Training from Hell to overcome her challenges;
- Has breakdowns that she can't get herself out from with just a smile, and one of them even almost costs Sora her whole career (her Heroic BSoD during the Circus Festival fiasco);
- If she gives up or hesitates heavily, she loses the ability to see Fool, meaning the Stage is more far than she thinks;
- It takes Sora a lot of time to be fully accepted by other performers who mistakenly think of her as either an asskisser, a fluke or to blame for some stuff that happens later.
- A more by-the-book Purity Sue of sorts can be found in the second season: Leon Oswald's waifish sister, Sophie. However, this is justified: Sophie has roughly the same goals and personality as Sora, and since she's a Dead Little Sister and the only person Leon truly cared for after their parents died, Leon is bound to idealize her. It would've been out of character to do otherwise.

Rebochan: Pulled the Chrono Crusade Mary Magdalene, on account of at best being a Yamato Nadeshiko but missing any actual traits of Suedom.

Starfire: Added Masaya from Tokyo Mew Mew to the list. The entry might be a little too snarky. I just finished the manga and I was a little appalled at just how far the author took it. I so didn't see it coming. Everyone complains about Berry Sue... no one ever gripes about just how bad Masaya is. Which means she must be stratospherically bad. I suppose he could also fall under relationship and he might even have hints of god mode... but I kind of felt that the whole sacrifice myself for the world and to protect the woman I love thing tipped him into the purity category.

Wall E from the film of the same name is a well-written example. Besides having a couple geniune flaws (Being The Fool, his naivte, and being slow on the uptake), he is also quite deep within the confines of the movie not having that much dialouge. The result is a character that the audience has the same reaction too as the characters, namely, they love him.

Lale: Um, how can I put this? That. Is. Not. A. Mary Sue.

Rebochan: Pulled the crazy-long Masaya entry because it was really just someone ranting about a character and a show they don't like than an actual example of a Marty Stu.

Tsura: Wow. Someone edited out my entry about Aeris Gainsborough being a Purity Sue. Is there a reason for that other than fanboy reasons? Because she fits almost all of the requirements for this trope. (Plus a small amount of God-Mode Sue).

Ethereal Mutation: If I recall correctly, it was the three word non-entry. If one want their entry to survive on the list, one has to describe why it belongs on the page (no matter how "Self Explanatory" one thinks it is). And I would probably still contest it anyway because:

Her role in the game is relatively small in the long run. She appears in what? 20% of the scenes at the most? She isn't even a central figure in most of those scenes, either.
She doesn't employ any true Character Derailment.
She doesn't have the plot bending to accommodate her.
She doesn't even appear any more idealized than any other character.

In summary, Last Of Her Kind Yamato Nadeshiko Mysterious Waif is not automatically Mary Sue (regardless what the dubious online "litmus tests" that just draw from the Common Mary Sue Traits or otherwise represent the tropes that the writers of it are sick of claim). One would have better luck trying to pin Cloud down as a Purity Sue than Aeris.

Scud East: ^^ I see what you did there. In fact, couldn't the kind of Mary-Sue definition dispute that fills this discussion page be described as A Problem Like Maria?

Rebochan: Deleted the Princess Aurora entry - because seriously, then we need to classify every single Disney fairy tale heroine as a Mary Sue. They're all pretty, they all have a princely boyfriend, and they all have a Card-Carrying Villain out to get them.

Ethereal Mutation: Fairy Tale characters in general should get a statutory exemption. It just goes with the territory and complaining about them is like complaining about nudity in pornography or gore in slasher films. The whole point behind fairy tales is to be juvenile wish fulfillment in the first place.

Rebochan: Man, why does this section always attract such bad examples? I pulled the Nausicaa one because it made no sense (AND she's not a Sue), and the Disney Princesses entry because none of them are Sues either. Disney wrote them as the straight up fairy tale archetypes they were, which means they were all A) Princesses B) Beautiful C) Attractive to hot princes and D) Have enemies that hate them for possessing A, B, and C.

Oh yea, fairy tales are less about wish fulfillment in their purest form and more about scaring the crap out of children to get them to behave properly. Oh, and turning damn near anything into a metaphor for sex (like...hey, Sleeping Beauty!)

Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here.

Arnold's sweet, indecisive and cheerful love interest Lila Sawyer from Hey Arnold technicallyt qualifies, but she seems to be a deliberate poke at the Mary Sue and/or Pollyanna character types, as well as written as a direct foil to the more Tsundere-like Helga Pataki.
- Since she comes from out of town, is better at everything than everyone else, and causes everyone to hate her for it, she's probably just The Minnesota Fats.

Prfnoff: Moved Tintin to God-Mode Sue.

Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Dang, that's where I'd moved him out of. My logic then was, if he was a God-Mode Sue, why would he need constant Deus Ex Machinas? Oh, well...

Ethereal Mutation: Deus ex Machina is part of the definition of God-Mode Sue. The character doesn't necessarily need to have some vaguely (if that) justified power level manifest itself as some defining character trait (i.e. a magic blessing, gadgets up the wazoo, etc.). Just being Strong as They Need to Be or having a disproportionately huge amount of luck in their efforts is enough.

Ethereal Mutation: I cut this example because it's both highly contested and generally misses the point.

Two words: WONDER. WOMAN. Possibly the Ur-example of this trope. Practically everybody in The DCU is portrayed as admiring Diana, adoring her, being inspired by her. (Of course, this is somewhat justified, considering that she was granted the beauty of Aphrodite when she was given life.) And she even outdoes the standard description of this trope, since her purity does extend to being a virgin. And she will probably remain so because, to her fans, no one is good enough to "do the deed" with her. This, of course, hasn't stopped writers from trying to hook her up anyway; Post Crisis, there have been flirtations with Superman, Batman, and Aquaman, as well as new, non-superhero characters from her own mythos.
- Wonder Woman's Purity Sue-ness is particularly in effect in Wonder Woman (second series) #170. Lois Lane not only thinks she is too-good-to-be-true, but is also nervous about Wondy's close friendship with Superman, so this issue is all about getting the cynical reporter into her worldwide fan club. Lois follows her for a "typical day" in which, among other deeds, she does the Mother Teresa thing by feeding starving children, petitions President Lex Luthor for a political favor, and even proves how down-to-Earth she can be by showing her skills at a pool parlor.
- Her Sue-ness is eventually lampshaded with the creation of one Veronica Cale, Diana's own personal Lex Luthor who despises her for being so flawless and sees her as being incapable of genuinely connecting with humanity or caring for their issues because she's so. DAMN. PERFECT.
- Pretty much the only Purity Sue qualification that Wonder Woman doesn't fit is that she actually does things, and isn't just there to be admired by the other characters. For example, it makes sense to admire someone if they save the world every half hour. Additionally, for any action hero/heroine to be a Purity Sue means that their feminine charms are not enough to fix the world in and of themselves, so it could be argued that Wonder Woman is one of those rare cases when God-Mode Sue and Purity Sue collide, with some minor Tsundere Sue elements sprinkled in.
  - Personally, This Troper thinks that the fact Wonder Woman is on this list and Superman isn't says a lot more about the people who put her here than the character. Wonder Woman has always had a) relationship issues, b) villains who simply would not be moved by her appeals to decency (see Psycho, Dr.; Ares), c) multiple vulnerabilities, and d) a temper of varying levels, but usually shorter than Big Blue's. She's The Cape, and that only makes her a Sue if being a Cape makes you a Mary Sue.

Rebochan: I cut the Dahlia Hawthorne and Iris entries because they completely missed the point of a Mary Sue and ironically gave out what tropes they *actually* fell under in the same entry.

I also pulled the Silent Bob entry because...well sheesh, if you're spending half the entry proving he's a balanced character and not a Sue, then why keep him on the Sue page?

Katsuhagi: Pulled the Nia entry because it was basically Complaining About Characters You Don't Like and personal opinion.

Princess Nia of Gurren Lagann is probably the worst offender this troper has ever found. She is totally and completely positive about all things, leading to a sickening naivete. Not to mention that the Beach Episode went out of its way to prove that she is perfect in all skills of every kind. Except some writer noticed an episode later that this would probably disgust the audience, so he threw in a semi-weakness by maker her cooking poisonous (except for the main character, who loves it). Somehow having a minor joke weakness just makes her MORE perfect. All of this is particularly annoying, since Yoko is far hotter, badass, and interesting but Nia forced her out of the plot almost completely.

Rebochan: Pulled Nausicaa, again. And where the hell is the Twincest link coming from?

Rebochan: What happened to the introduction? And the image? They've been hacked up. I mean, maybe the image was too big or something, but if you're going to make a change to so much of the article at once that include removing a ton of content, can we discuss it first?

I uploaded the image in a smaller size - was that the problem?

Ethereal Mutation: I made a new page called Mary Sue Classic that has the old stuff. People were taking it at face value and it was sort of trying to force two separate but interrelated things into the same article. Anyway, I'll move the resized picture over there as well.

That makes more sense. I can dig up a new picture for this one.

Ethereal Mutation: Fine by me.

Rebochan: New image is go. Fear the sparkles.

Rebochan: I pulled this one:

Anne of Green Gables exemplifies this trope in all but passivity, at least in the first book.

Because on top of not being passive, her actions do have consequences and she's also described as being somewhat homely, including by herself. Purity Sue is not allowed to be anything but stunning.

Mouser: Her ugliness comes down to "she's skinny and has red hair." Purity Sue is allowed to be described as homely as long as she's really Suetiful All Along.

Rebochan: I always thought "skinny" by the novel's standards meant it was unattractive by the standards of her time. That or a kind of gangly skinniness that is not normally considered attractive.

Mouser: I seem to recall (it's been a while, okay?) that sufficiently critical eyes judged Anne prettier than the plumper, "flashier" beauties, and I got the impression that the author wanted us to agree with that.

Rebochan: I have to admit it's been just as long since I read it too, and at least part of my mental image of her is influenced by the one in the Akage no Anne anime, where she definitely wasn't drawn as attractively skinny as a child (she was as an adult).

Rebochan: Pulled Alouette, she's been discussed on the God-Mode Sue page before too. Her main problem is that she is not perfect and she has an obedience to the law that brings her to Knight Templar level and the heroine of the game calls her out on it.

Rebochan: I pulled Hitomi, yet again, because the entry is always getting deleted, or getting natter and justifying edits that prove why she's not an example of this. Since it's the same guy adding it over again, yea...pretty obvious it has nothing to do with Suedom and more to Complaining About Characters You Don't Like.

Evil_Tim: And nothing to do with it being a subjective trope, obviously. You can make excuses for any Sue under the sun if you happen to like them. Hitomi's often given as an example Mary Sue: she's pure, has no meaningful negative traits [since everyone either forgives them or finds them charming], isn't blamed for anything she does wrong [including being the direct cause of a massive, devastating war] and the world literally warps around her needs: in particular, she falls for Allen who promptly pulls a character 360 from 'chivalrous' to 'bastard' just so she doesn't look bad for not choosing him. To be exact, she's Akane Kazuki's Mary Sue. Kazuki, Kanzaki. Yeah, subtle it ain't.

Rebochan: Sorry, not like a character doesn't make them a Sue either. Nor does scrubbing them of any character development to repress any traits that makes them *not* a Sue, nor does reassigning story events in order to make negative events revolve around her. And if you seriously thought Allen's turn came out of nowhere just to help Hitomi hook up with the guy, the guy that may I remind you she still doesn't get at the end of the show, you were not at all paying attention to the show. Hitomi also did not cause the war. Pulling it again.

Evil_Tim: She does get him, she just chooses to return home afterward. Again, Hitomi is used as an example of this kind of Mary Sue. This seems to be your personal objection because you like the character, and nothing to do with her Sue status or lack thereof. And she does cause the war, it's established that her readings and visions create what she sees. What's the first thing she sees? Oh yeah, Zaibach attacking Fanelia.

Rebochan: I don't give a crap about Hitomi, it's juSt painfully obvious that you just don't like her and you keep exaggerating or ignoring traits of hers, other characters, and plot points within the story to try and make the claim that she is a Sue. She's not. I personally get tired of people using the Sue pages to rant about characters they don't like that just don't qualify. She's not a Sue.

Unknown Troper: Axed entry on the Ultramarines. They've been that way for their entire existence in the fluff, and being the "epitome of a Space Marine" means you're the epitome of being a psychopathic religious nutjob whose main purpose in life is the complete slaughter of anything vaguely threatening humanity, or isn't human in the first place. That's not what a Purity Sue is.

Be: I guess you're the same Unknown Troper that doesn't think Calgar is a God Moder, to which I say pshaw. I don't disagree that they've been like that since their introduction, but I don't see how that makes it excusable in the first place, and you can't use the ACI to defend not calling them Sues because a) by that tack you could probably cut a good number of all the examples and b) I can just go "sorry mate they're actually the heralds of the emperor's will and the last bastion protecting humanity from the forces of chaos" with the end result that there's fluff to support us both but there's more supporting my standpoint than there is yours.

The Smurfs are specifically stated as being the greatest possible thing a Space Marine could become - even if you're going to whine about what measure a Marine is to begin with, that alone is still a serious Sue quality because everybody looks up to them. They have no flaws whatsoever, in comparison to things like the Blood Angels' Blood Rage, the Imperial Fists missing a couple of organs or the Iron Hands' suspicious ties to the Adeptus Mechanicus, but they've been responsible for some of the Imperium's greatest victories, had a Heroic Sacrifice or two to garnish and their head honcho is currently being depicted as the greatest human warrior in the entire universe.

To summarise - If the Necrons can be thought of as Sues, so too can the Smurfs. They've been pretty bad in the past, but their Sueish qualities have just been ramped up to obscene levels lately. Please don't erase the entry again without coming here first.

Space: For Ruri, could I ask for any other inputs? These don't seem reasonable or legitimate enough to raise her to Purity Sue. Surely, Ruri, the main character and protagonist, can't steal the spotlight in such a short movie since it was more about showing Ruri's growth and disposition. Even though the plot/movie was designed more as a gift for fans, the plot at least justifies the reason for reuniting old crew members. And the old crew members had their share (little to fair) of screen time for nostalgia. Deus ex Machina and a complaint about her not being her old deadpan self aren't really reasons either. Although, I'm having a harder time seeing the DEM...but that's a different subject to discuss about. After awhile, if there are none, I shall pull her entry.

Prfnoff: Nuking Canon Sue examples:

Stuff

Canon

Anime

Possibly a spoof, but in the Ranma 1/2 anime there's an episode where the ~~Monster of the Week~~ Rival of the Week is actually a friendly non-rival martial artist from out of town. He's amazingly strong, has great manners, is helpful, and can talk Ranma's rivals into reforming, as well as being innocent and naive (he carries a live cow for that night's beef dinner, thinking Kasumi asked for one). By episode's end everyone but Ranma (who's pretty jealous of him) is waving him off tearfully.
Shirayuki Berii/Mew Berry (a.k.a. "Berry Sue") from Tokyo Mew Mew a la mode. This is an especially grating case, because the translators made the fandom wait forever for a sequel, only to release it... and reveal that Ichigo and company had been reduced to living accessories for an unsympathetic ditz that immediately gets twice the power of any previous character (for no reason at all, Ichigo's powers can now only be sustained for enough time to give Berii a power boost, at which point she turns into her helpless kitten form), magnetizes the cast so that they immediately start stalking her to see how special she is and transfer to her school for no good reason, and makes everyone love her more than their sanity. While she's also a God-Mode Sue, it's not so much her ridiculous power level that's offensive as it is how she derailed the rest of the cast into a fawning fan club.
Chikane Himemiya from Kannazuki No Miko. She's pretty much a flawless Miss Perfect; beautiful, talented, member of the Absurdly Powerful Student Council, and very rich... and everybody, male or female, wants her. She later becomes a God-Mode Sue when she singlehandedly trashes the good Orochi Neck Souma on foot... and corrupts his mecha for her own. She then joins the Orochi and slaughters the rest of the Orochi Necks on foot with much ease, except one who eventually just Jumped Off The Cliff. It was not until Himeko later killed her that she revealed that everything she did was part of a Xanatos Gambit to let her beloved be happy (in this case, her "beloved" is Himeko). She also subverts the usual "die-and-wait-until-reincarnation" process and comes back to life almost instantly.
Lots of Fushigi Yuugi fangirls accuse Miaka Yuuki of being a Mary Sue since she's well-loved by lots of bishonen, is ditzy but good-hearted, gets everything to work for her in the end, etc. They conveniently forget that Miaka can be bratty and selfish sometimes, as well as often making bad decisions that come back to bite her and others in the ass, with consequences ranging from merely running gags to serious feuds and misunderstandings.
- The general argument for Miaka as a Sue is that none of those consequences are ever depicted as specifically being her fault, and most of them don't affect her directly, just the people around her. Plus, the entire rest of the cast (apart from most of the Seiryuu Seishi) love her and forgive her— that is, they would, if they ever held anything against her in the first place.
Unit 13 from Hayate The Combat Butler. In the one episode he appears, he gets the entire cast in awe of himself, intentionally exhibits what character flaws he does have as part of a Xanatos Gambit to fix a strain in Nagi and Hayate's relationship, and delivers an epic speech before dying in a Heroic Sacrifice to save earth from a meteorite. And he's played completely straight, which would classify him as I Am Not Making This Up material seeing how every other sue on the show is played for comedy.
- This editor thought this was supposed to be at jab at Hayate's own ultra-competence.
Ruri Hoshino, Martian Successor Nadesico's one-girl Spotlight-Stealing Squad, as portrayed in The Movie. She is the entire focus of The Movie (despite an Excuse Plot to reunite the crew and a sexy upgrade for the Cool Ship) and solves that movie's main problem singlehandedly in about a minute and a half. She becomes a little grating. Especially since her solution involves almost no Humongous Mecha fighting. She isn't even all that snarky while she does it.
Hikari/Kari of Digimon Adventure strays into this territory from time to time. The only child to have a partner who regularly stays in champion form (until the season three reboot), while the other crests represent character traits such as courage and friendship, her presents light, often stated to be wise beyond her years and oh yes, is completely flawless. Unless you count "only thinking about others and not herself" as a flaw.
- What about bottling up your feelings to the point of harming yourself? For a long time in 02, she's not really that strong when push comes to shove.
- One could claim that she developed a flaw in the second season in that she constantly played with Daisuke/Davis' feelings for her rather than give him a straight no, but no one ever seems to call her out on it.
  - That's only in the dub.
- Then again, she was this close to a serious Freak Out once, because of her bad habit of bottling up her felings. Miyako has to literally bitchslap sense into her.
- Has everyone forgotten her rather poignant and emtionally crippling inferiority complex regarding her older brother? This even degraded to the point where she had essentially given up, causing her closest friend, Takeru, to get angry at her attitude and, later in the same episode, remind her that she doesn't have to depend on Taichi all of the time—she has her other friends to count on too.
- Plus, Gatomon was a pretty weak Champion form.
  - Without her Super Awesome And Shiny tailring, yes, but in the first season she beat pretty much every other champion at once. Granted, it was to establish her as someone who was tough but it means she is at least competitive in that regard.
Sora from Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto ~Natsu no Sora~ has quite a bit of this. Sure, she suffers from bouts of occasional shyness, but the mere fact that her character design is much prettier that of the rest of the cast should already ring some alarm bells.
Hitomi Kanzaki from Escaflowne is loved by more or less everyone, even when it's revealed the angsty little twit single-handedly caused a devastating war to erupt and continue through reading Tarot cards while not believing in herself. She's never taken to task for all the people who suffer and die as a direct result of her, and tends to mope around in Sympathetic Sue mode any time she's called on anything until someone sweeps in to comfort her. When she's loved by two guys, one of them helpfully turns from a chivalrous bishounen into a posessive, heartless bastard so the choice doesn't sully her character. She gets the right guy, ahead of a more reasonably-written character who has known him since both were children and was prepared to lay down her life to protect him.

Comic Books

Gwen Stacy of Spider Man, post-mortem. Originally, she was a Tsundere with some pretty crazy mood swings, but any work discussing her since she was dropped off a bridge paints her into an innocent, beautiful, intelligent, perfect woman. The graphic novel by Alex Ross, Marvels, even goes so as far to turn her into Too Good for This Sinful Earth.
- Some writers have tried to subvert this and remind people that Gwen was you know, human via flashback storylines. Usually they go too far in the other direction though, such as the one in which she was retconned into having the Green Goblin's superpowered love children. No, really. The writers are usually crucified by the fanbase after any attempt, regardless.

Film

Lady In The Water features as a significant character an author who will write a work of fiction so universally loved and inspirational that it will change the face of the world forever. The author just happens to be played by M Night Shyamalan, the movie's writer and director. Coincidence?
- He even made sure he had a movie critic horribly killed off before the reveal of M. Night as the martyr of the story.
Maria in The Sound of Music, but then again that one was a VERY white-washed version of the true story it was based on. Or maybe it's just Julie Andrews being there...
- But... she has confidence in sunshine! And rain! Certainly somebody with that much confidence is destined to be somebody with no flaws.
Played with in Pleasantville: When the main characters, a brother and sister are transported into a fictional 1950s-era sitcom in which everything is (apparently) perfect, the sister is forced to assume the role of the daughter in the fictional sitcom family, who is, of course, loved by everyone. The name of the character she is forced to become? Mary Sue.
- Erm, it's a Parody Sue.
Muriel Pritchett in the film adaptation of The Accidental Tourist is another example of a Hollywoodization Sue - in the book, Muriel is far from perfect. She gets moody, screechy and ambivalent, while in the film, she's virtuous and her "flaw" is that she's offbeat and kooky - in such an endearing way! To a lesser extent, Macon's ex-wife Sarah is one, in that she shrugs and says, "Okay" when finding out Macon's fallen for Muriel. In the book, she is left protesting at Macon, and stating that he and Muriel would be one of those odd couples that people can't understand how these two opposites attracted.

Literature

This essay describes a couple characters that popped up in a magazine in the mid-19th century. See if they sound familiar.
Lucie Manette, A Tale of Two Cities. She doesn't actually do anything, yet everybody is fascinated with her. I guess you could call her a Macguffin Girl...
Marius Pontmercy of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables is a beautiful, heroic, passionate, idealistic stand-in for Hugo himself, down to the climax of the sprawling novel centered on a short-lived rebellion in Paris which Hugo actually observed in his youth.
- He is also nigh unto oblivious to everything except Cosette and said revolution, to the point where he's acquired the affectionate Fan Nickname of "Doltboy."
Dagny Taggart from Atlas Shrugged is a somewhat scary example of a fully grown Mary Sue in a serious, influential piece of work. She is and has everything Ayn Rand could ever hope for, a total personification of her values — she's a brilliant though underestimated businesswoman, more beautiful than anyone else in the room without even trying, to the point that even the simplest of dresses seems 'indecent' on her. She is the hingepin of all the important changes in the world, the last and most important part of the puzzle, the one everyone wishes they could reach, the one everyone looks to. She has multiple lovers, moving on from one to the next without any warning or explanation given — or needed, apparently, as each of these lovers peacefully acknowledges the others without the slightest surprise or jealousy, with the impression given that they're going to quietly bear never-again-requited candles for her indefinitely.
- Technically, John Galt is a closer fit here. It's Dagny's failure to embrace the Objectivist Ideal until the very end that moves the plot along and causes her and everyone else a world of misery and trouble, while he faffs about with his sunny-shiny hair and everyone confesses their love and adoration to him at every turn (and Dagny falls in love with him before first sight). Then again, this is Ayn Rand, she never denied that this was the case.
Anne Rice's characters have long had a touch of the Mary Sue about them, but Tarquin Blackwood from Blackwood Farm reached new depths. Young, impossibly and extravagantly rich, heir to an American gothic plantation, sexually precocious, impossibly fascinating to the vampires of the series with a Deep Dark Secret in his past. Basically all kinds of special.
"Sister" Jane Arnold in Rita Mae Brown's Jefferson Hunt mystery series. She never makes a mistake, the other characters spend inordinate amounts of time discussing how wonderful she is, half the male characters are in love with her, and the only people who dislike her tend to either be the villains or end up dead. Add in the facts that (1) Sister is the Master of Fox Hounds (MFH) for the Jefferson Hunt, and (2) Brown's author blurb emphasizes that she is the MFH for the Oak Ridge Hunt Club, and the Sue-ness of the character becomes blindingly obvious.
Little Women: Amelia Curtis "Amy" March has plenty of faults, even in Part Two (selfish, a bit shallow, whiny, over-the-top), but by then, the author seems unaware of this and constantly describes how beautiful and graceful she is, how wise and kind and courteous and good she is in the chapters "Calls" and "Consequences", and generally can't do anything but praise her perfection (whether true or not). This Troper can't imagine what Alcott did to her sister May (Amy's Real Life counterpart) to warrant such compensation, but it must have been serious.
- Beth is *also* accused of being a Purity Sue, even with her crippling self-esteem and insecurity issues. This is due to Creator Breakdown, as she was based on Alcott's own Dead Little Sister.
- In Jo's Boys, there's just no denying how Amy's daughter "The Princess" Bess is perfectly perfect in every way. None of the characters would deny it, that's for sure.
Beansidhe's Wail's Wynne, though not a published character, is a fairly good example of this. She's beautiful, powerful (she's half fairy, half god), has a legion of fans thanks to her band, was loved, adored, and considered the muse of several famous artists (including Shakespeare) and nobles throughout history (before someone (usually her sister) got jealous of their love and killed her), and even died during the sinking of the Titanic. Oh, don't worry, she's no slut. All of those men were actually the reincarnations of one guy. Now that's loyalty! There's also the fact that her and her sisters' beauty was enough to almost cause a car accident. (Which they laughed and blew kisses at.) Did I mention that she's also a self-insert?
Brevelan from the Dragon Nimbus trilogy. After escaping from a forced marrige and attemptesd rape, she flees into the woods to live a wonderful and purel ife in harmony with nature and the creatures of the woods - oh and the last of the dragons which she shares an empathic bond with. She uses her own "special" form of magic which is based on her singing (and, of course, she has a beautiful singing voice) which is more powerful and "pure" then the magic used by trained wizards. By the end of the first book, both of the male leads - one of them the prince of the realm - have fallen in love with her. (And then there's the scene where the pair beg, plead and grovel to her not to cut her hair) Also, she can't stand the smell of the cooked meat, so all around her become Vegetarians by default... which sounds like a case of Author On Board.
- Princess Rossmikka probably qualifies for this as well. In fact, just about any female by Irene Radford will gnerrally be pure, innocent and radiantly beautiful
Many Victorian-era authors bought into this trope to varying extents, being both inclined to sentimentalism and conditioned to value women especially in terms of their virtue. The uber-type of the Victorian Purity Sue is Agnes Wickfield, from Dickens' David Copperfield, who is shown standing in the light of a stained-glass window, pointing upward, on very first appearance. Narrator David rhapsodises about his dear 'sister' at every opportunity; she's a paragon of womanhood even by the standards of her era - beautiful and kind and wise and helpful and sympathetic, yet so gentle and modest about it all you'd hardly know she was there, save for the way her goodness 'somehow' makes everyone's life better. The villain's presumption to aspire to her hand is used to underscore just how evil a cad he is. Her beneficent influence extends even to David's first wife Dora, who on her deathbed extracts a promise from Agnes that she alone will marry David after Dora's gone. Which Agnes does, having 'loved [David] all her life!' Not surprisingly, she is considered one of Dickens' least successful female characters.

Otto von Drachenhausen(that is what his title would be though the author doesn't talk much about it), of Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle is a perfect example of this trope.

While not a "pure" example, Mina from Dracula also has many characteristics of a Purity Sue. In fact, one could argue that she's the Victorian equivalent of a Yamato Nadeshiko except for the fact that the readers of the time probably viewed her as 'too active' and wanting too many rights...

Maria from Metropolis. In the book, everyone but no one worships the ground she walks on and would happily die for her, she's the most beautiful creature ever to draw breath, and every word from her mouth is taken as a divine utterance. Aside from being a painfully transparent Virgin Mary Expy, she's also part of a Generation Xerox which included the protagonist's mother Hel, an even worse Purity Sue whose Death by Childbirth still drives all the guilt the story runs on.
- There's a book? In the film, she's actively hated by the rich half of the town for being a Soapbox Sadie, constantly needs rescuing, and takes a backseat to the Aesop about economics. Admittedly, she is able to get two warring factions to cooperate, but she gets help in that and it isn't easy.
Some of Anne McCaffrey's heroines are extremely Sueish. Especially Menolly, who's a musical genius, kind, generous, brave, hated for no reason by mean people, loved and admired by people who are just as good as she is, etc. Killashandra's also a good example.
- Oh, man, Killashandra practically deserves her own page — after her Special Perfect Specialness is tragically ignored by her music teachers (because, you know, being relegated to the chorus is a fate worse than death), she pretty much magically winds up becoming the Best Crystal Singer Evar. It's already a bit of a special snowflake's job in the first place, but after our heroine gets an inexplicable free pass from the painful and occasionally deadly physical ailment that comes with adaptation to life on the planet's surface — just because, one assumes, it's so much prettier just to have her wake up all magically ready to go... (That, and I'm not sure there's a single man in the books who didn't want to sleep with her.) Coincidentally (or, you know, not), Anne McCaffrey mentions in the introduction to one of her Pern novels that being a singer was her dream for quite some time.
- Though to be fair, Killa is quite the diva drama queen, which is obvious to the reader, and it takes her a hundred-something years to grow out of that. Definitely a Special Snowflake type, but this troper thinks she's just unpleasant enough at times to have her flaws.
- I still maintain that Menolly doesn't really belong here. She wasn't adored by everyone; not everyone who didn't adore her was necessarily portrayed as unsympathetic; and the only people who actually hated her were Pona and her clique. Also, despite all of her other traits, she's never described as beautiful.
  - She managed to hook up with Sebell, who is apparently her dream guy (despite/because of starting out as one of her teachers) and quite a bit older than her, and Jaxom appears to be keen on her during his hormonal phase in The White Dragon. This troper was left with a distinct impression that she was at least fairly attractive.
  - Menolly was mistaken as a male once (it was in the first book in the Harper Hall trilogy, by a dragonrider that noticed her running from the leading edge of Thread). Whatever she is, she's not a paragon of feminine beauty.
The author of the Sweet Valley High book series actually admitted in a later interview that Elizabeth, the smart, sensible blonde twin, was a Mary Sue.
Arya from the Inheritance cycle, overlapping with Relationship Sue. From the moment she's introduced, there are paragraphs upon paragraphs of description to tell readers just how beautiful she is (can there really be that many ways to describe the shine of someone's hair?) She is also made to be seen as an incredibly sympathetic person, a vegetarian, and the mysterious one who causes intense silence in a battlefield full of fighters. She's also an elven princess.
- And even with all this focus, she still seems to exist solely for the hero (and probably the author) to drool over, and while so far she's been rejecting him, Eragon has actually been prophesied to hook up with someone beautiful and of noble birth, which fits Arya, princess of the elves, to a T.
- To top all that off, the only ones that dislike her are the bad guys and the dwarves, and the dwarves only dislike her because she manages to insult their religion with nothing but a quiet smile on her face. This might've been a bad trait in the story if later on, religion wasn't seen as naive and a way to push responsibility away.
Maid Marian is portrayed this way in Jennifer Roberson's Robin Hood novel Lady of the Forest. Every male character falls in love with her on sight and wants to protect her (if a hero) or possess her (if a villain), her love (and sex) heals Robin who is mentally damaged from his experiences in the Crusades, etc. She gets a little better and becomes a more believable character in the sequel Lady of Sherwood.
Jaenelle from Anne Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy. A manifestation of all good sentient hopes and dreams and destined to be the queen of the world, her birth was prophecied centuries beforehand. She's practically omnipotent from childhood and only gets more powerful, but she's still innocent and sweet, and all the "good guys" devote their lives to protecting her (mostly from her self-sacrificing tendencies). She tries to sacrifice herself to save the world, but is saved with The Power of Love. Plus she has an angsty past; her foster parents deemed her unstable, so she was sent to a "mental asylum" where she was molested and later raped (with some device that tore her vagina) which for some reason put her in a two-year coma. Every good guy wants nothing more than to love and serve her, despite her being a hysterical, judgmental and offense-taking little brat. Oh, and she single-handedly reconciles humans with all the telepathic animals, whom the humans previously didn't even know existed. I Am Not Making This Up when I say that the all-overshadowing main conflict of the series is the other characters' struggle to love and serve Jaenelle without bruising her precious feelings.
- She is also something of a Tsundere Sue. She's a small child at the beginning and a young woman at the end, and she is oh so innocent and impressionable and emotionally vulnerable and fragile. Combined with her power, this makes her a dangerous menace to be around. But anything destructive she does is not her fault; it's because the bad, bad people hurt her feelings. Afterwards, everyone flocks around her to cheer her up.
Phineas of A Separate Peace. Albeit somewhat subverted in that he's an odd combination of this and The Ace.
The Tabura and Salixia from Brian Jacques' Redwall book, Eulalia!. The Tabura is 'the wisest of all badgers' DESPITE it being stated in Mossflower that female badgers are scholars, male badgers are badasses. He comes to the Abbey, and all every single solitary creature within its walls can do is gush about how wise and wonderful the Tabura is. He has little sessions in the courtyard about the virtues of simplicity. He's a crackerjack healer. And then, as it turns out he's also a psychic badger with telepathic powers!!! His ward Salixia is, if possible, an even bigger Sue. She's constantly described as being slim and beautiful, she's wise in the ways of herbs, and then out of nowhere...SHE'S AN EXPERT ARCHER TOO. To the point where she actually stands next to a shrew and tells him exactly how to make the shot. And of course, Gorath the Flame, the other badger, falls madly in badger wuv with her, and she with him. Yeugh.
A perhaps unintentional parody is in the satire Being There, in which most everyone comes to be fascinated by and even in awe of Chauncey Gardiner, a brilliant-yet-humble socio-political thinker who brings hope and clarity to a complex world with his simple sayings, looks described (in the novel) as a cross between Cary Grant and Ted Kennedy, and elegant manners. No one can dig up a single bad thing about his past; he's a man with nothing to hide...of course, the reader/viewer knows that his real name is Chance the Gardener, who is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, mentally challenged, was isolated from the world until middle-age, picked up what little he knew of it from TV, and happens to look like someone intelligent because of his nice clothes and manners. Thus, the poor guy is passive by nature and while he's a good person at heart, the things the other characters love about him are all based on their preconceptions and misinterpretations of what he says and does, which he is virtually incapable of correcting due to his mental shortcomings.
Any protagonist from a Dan Brown book is, without exception, an expert in their field — internationally recognized as the expert-of-experts in fact, elicits love at first sight from their love-interest, who is, as a general rule, fabulously attractive, and probably way out of the league of the sort of person the protagonist is meant to be. Not to mention able to act as an Action Hero despite being a middle-aged intellectual. Their inability to sort out the plots by the end of the first page when all the readers do makes this exceptionally infuriating.
- Robert Langdon from The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons is an example. An athletic, ruggedly handsome, and brilliant academic, in both books he is apparently the only person in the world smart or qualified enough to solve the various obscure puzzles that turn up in the plots of both books. He is, essentially, what every art history or religion major wants to be.
Brutally, brutally subverted in the classic Dostoevsky novel The Idiot. Prince Myshkin is a model of Christ-like kindness, able to forgive his worst enemies and treat the most depraved members of society with compassion. He talks to servants as equals and has an innate connection with children. His innate integrity distinguishes him from the pettiness of Russian high society, and everyone realizes this. In addition, he inherites a princely fortune, and is a world-class calligrapher (not to mention a virgin, who still treats women with the utmost honor). Unfortunately, his saintly example rubs off on exactly no one: they all turn to their self-destructive behaviors, unable to prevent themselves from taking advantage of the Prince, leaving his relationships broken, and in the end driving him to insanity. Yup, Humans Are Bastards.
- Aljoscha from The Brothers Karamzov is just like that and everybody, even the most cynical, love him.
The titular character from The Legend Of Rah And The Muggles. (And yes, in case we all forgot...) Let me put it this way: Rah is so perfect in every way that his brother Zyn turns into a Card-Carrying Villain out of sheer envy... which could be considered a deconstruction, actually, if it weren't for the way Zyn is portrayed.
Lampshaded in the first book of J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood series. During her wedding ceremony, when her name is being carved into her new husband's back as per tradition, protagonist Beth (who is stunningly beautiful, whose lost father turned out to be a now dead vampire who's left her millions and millions, and who has won the heart of the womanizing vampire king within days of meeting him) laments that her name is nine-lettered Elizabeth instead of something short like Mary or Sue.
Pearl from The Scarlet Letter. The chapter in which she is properly introduced literally consists entirely of saying how perfect a child she is.
Bella Swan from the Twilight saga. As soon as she moves to the pitiful, backwater town of Forks, she gathers a sizable fanboy following at school, despite describing herself as rather plain. Even worse, the fanboys continue to flock after despite the fact that she pre-judges them based on appearances, shunning one of them because he looks like a "chess club nerd." And then, of course, the enigmatic, 108 year old vampire Edward falls for her... because she smells good. And he has apparently never loved a girl so strongly before, despite having spent a hundred years as a hormonal teenager. And her only flaw, besides low self-esteem? Clumsiness, so that Edward can conveniently come to her rescue all the time. Of course.
- Edward sets her straight later in the book and basically calls her an idiot for whining about being plain when she's actually very attractive.
- This editor has just started reading the books (though, admittedly, is only about nine chapters in and never had a high opinion of the books, anyway), and has noticed that anything Bella does only comes to the benefit of others: she's paired up two couples and cooks (and, I'm assuming, does pretty much all the household chores) for her father who works all the time (even weekends!) and just likes to watch "the game". And that's just two examples! In fact, the only things she ever does wrong are by accident or because of a misunderstanding. Or, as mentioned above, she's "clumsy"—whereby she is immediately forgiven. He could be wrong, though.

Live-Action TV

Lana Lang in Smallville is, of course, Clark Kent's love interest and is therefore adored and idolized by him, but in the course of the show she's had the most psychotic stalkers (especially in the first season, when at least half the Freaks of the Week were devoted to Lana Lang.) If that wasn't bad enough, she also learned enough martial arts (in the course of like, a day) to spin-kick a handsy football player into a table, got possessed by an ancient powerful witch ancestor, had Clark love her so very much that he chose her life over his father's, had everyone from Lex Luthor to Bizarro Clark Kent fall desperately (and pathetically) in love with her, orchestrated an elaborate ruse to fake her own death and move to China, and learned enough Mad Hacking Skills to spy on her ex-husband Lex Luthor as well as make the Chloe Sullivan character completely useless.
- Not to mention that she was accepted into a prestigious art school in Paris, despite never having shown either interest or skill at art, and being able to manage a busy coffee shop despite being only a high school student. Hell, despite still having to attend high school and do all the homework. Isn't managing usually a full time job?
- Lana Lang is a rare example that jumps from one Sue type to another as the show goes on. While unquestionably perfectly talented, beautiful and beloved by every male character she bumps into on the street, the specific types of Sue that she qualifies for are many and varied. At certain points in the show (like the first few seasons,) Lana does indeed come off as a Purity Sue, a Sympathetic Sue and a Tsundere Sue at various points. Later seasons have turned her into a certified psychopath, if not a Card-Carrying Villain at times. Seemingly realizing they'd need to drop the pretext of Purity Sue to make those two unpleasant traits work, the writers strengthened her Tsundere Sue side, while adding in some extra Relationship Sue and Villain Sue to fill the gaps. Even at this point, though, all the other characters think so highly of her that if she'd drop the evil Luthor psycho routine, she could probably pick up her Purity Sue title where she left off without much hassle (though many viewers wouldn't be fooled.)
Recurring Stargate Atlantis character Lucius Lavin attains Mary Sue status through the use of various forms of Phlebotinum. In his debut episode, "Irresistable," he has discovered a drug that makes him produce a pheromone that causes people love and admire him, except Shepard who has a cold through most of the episode. By the end of the episode, he's convinced Dr. Weir to marry him (probably), has had the "Ancient Gene" installed in him, and everyone cheers him on as he becomes able to pilot one of the gene-locked Jumpers (Rodney even says, "Fly, Lucius, fly!"). Fortunately, a cure/vaccine is discovered by the end of the episode, rendering Lucius' pheromone useless. However, in a later episode he attains Mary Sue status again through use of an Ancient personal force-field generator and hired goons. No one bothers to tell him it's out of juice at the end of the episode, however, before leaving while he performs his favorite trick, letting some kid try to kick him in the groin.
- I think that makes him a deconstruction of the trope.
- And Samantha Carter? She probably is yet to find something she can't do extremely well after 10 seasons. Not to mention she's a better scientist than Mckay, usually correcting him, without having nearly as much bad traits (if any) than him. Oh, and most Alternate Timelines have her doing an Heroic Sacrifice.
Annie Blackburne in Twin Peaks, an ex-nun with a tragic past who immediately turns Agent Cooper into a fawning idiot.
Power Rangers Mystic Force: Nick. Nick, Nick, Nick. His presence makes everyone else able to go Beyond the Impossible (as opposed to him being all-powerful on his own). It's apparently this ability, as opposed to raw power, that makes him "The Light," which he's prophesied to be. He only has to give a determination speech to take the rest of the team from uncharacteristically ready to give up to card-carrying Determinators. Near the end of the season, two mentor types wind up focusing only on him, without the rest of the team even around to watch—perhaps because the villains, too, have singled him out. Characters bend around him like a Purity Sue. And he winds up being the only one of the main five with any connection to the overall plot. However, he can be powerful on his own in bursts that hint at his Mysterious Past. Big Bad that nobody can touch? Surprise, banishment spell. The Dragon brings his sword down toward Nick's head? Kaboom, fire spell. Stuff like this only happens at the last second during desperate times; it is far from an every-week thing. Finally, the Mysterious Past means he doesn't know who his family is, and sometimes feels alone and unwanted, and he also has plenty of self-doubt.
Carly Shay from iCarly. She has a popular webshow (getting several hundred thousand hits a week, which would make it one of the most popular webcasts in the world in Real Life), and as a result of this, she and her friends are very popular at her school, both with the students and with the staff (save for the occasional Sadist Teacher). She's a nearly straight-A student, only missing out on straight-As due to her Single-Issue Wonk history teacher Mr. Devlin. Finally, most of the boys in the show, including her best friend Freddy, are attracted to her.
- Still, she's a far cry more likable than Megan, the character she played on Drake And Josh, who also happens to be a Mary Sue in certain ways.
Jasmine from Angel is a nifty subversion... she has a hypnotic power that causes everyone who sees her to instantly become entranced and view her as a Purity Sue, which is of course hiding the fact that her true appearance is of a decaying maggot-covered corpse and she eats people. A lot.

Newspaper Comics

Michael Patterson from Lynn Johnston's comic strip For Better or For Worse. Although examples of his Stu-ishness abound, the defining moment was when he sent off his first novel to a publisher and, without the help of an agent or any prior published fiction to his name, received a reply three weeks later, with a gushing acceptance letter from the editor praising his genius, and a $25,000 advance check. Margaret Atwood probably doesn't even get $25,000 advances. Just to rub salt in the wound, Johnston has, off-strip, posted sample passages from this "wonderful novel" and they are horrible. His book was published a scant seven months later in hardcover. Seven months after that, his second book was published, also in hardcover, and this time there's talk of movie deals.
- Anthony Caine in the same work. Shaenon Garrity's enormous rant describes the antipathy he inspires in a great many fans perfectly: "It's like the strip has become a FBOFW fanfic written by Anthony." He was constantly talked up by everyone else in the strip as reliable, successful, and romantic, without ever actually doing anything on camera to deserve it. The only person that didn't like him? Naturally, his ex-wife, portrayed as a Complete Monster for not being happy with him still openly pining for Elizabeth for their entire marriage. The final six weeks of the strip were aglow with the glory of his final triumph in marrying Liz, in a wedding impossibly held in six weeks and with all of the services provided for free because everyone in the town was so happy to see him marry Liz. Even Liz's grandfather having a heart attack was considered far less important than the wedding in the strip's morality.

Opera

Leonore from Beethoven's Fidelio. All anyone can talk about is how amazing she is! When disguised as a man to save her imprisoned lover she is so attractive that the gaoler's daughter falls in love with her, which she heartlessly takes advantage of and is not remotely reproached when the truth is revealed! She fixes everything just by showing up! And the opera ends with a song about how marvellous she is!

Tabletop RPGs

The Forgotten Realms D&D setting has several Sue-like characters, but the Seven Sisters are the closest to Purity Sues, particularly High Lady Alustriel, queen of Silverymoon. An immortal, all-powerful sorceress and Chosen disciple of the Goddess of Magic, she is also, according to the Wiki, "known for her love and devotion to her people...extremely popular in Silverymoon (as well as everywhere else she goes), and most of her subjects would do anything within their power to keep her from harm." The only thing keeping her from being irritatingly Suetiful is her unavailability...she's too busy filling her kingdom with sweetness and light to get involved with the rest of the world.
- Alustirel does break trope by having promiscuous sex with a large number of partners, all of whom instantly fall in love with her after one night and are absolutely loyal from then on. The most absurd aspect of the character, however, is how creator Ed Greenwood describes her ability to maintain a girlish figure while pregnant by 'distributing the fat from her stomach to the rest of her body.' This has led to some speculation about whether her children are constructed in pieces (by nanites) and only assembled at the moment of birth.
  - It's also worth noting that said promiscuous sex typically takes place with various nobles and faction leaders from around her kingdom. She does so in order to keep them in line and favorable towards her Light And Hope policies. Basically, her Utopian politics revolve around making love, not war.
Socially-oreinted Solar Exalts from the Exalted often are variations of this trope. Or, possibly, subversions, as their auras of righteousness and purity are usually the result of the conscious use of magical mind control powers by them.
- With the release of the latest Space Marine Codex, the title of Purity Sue can be applied to an entire Chapter of Marines. The Ultramarines are explicitly said to be the epitome of what it means to be a Marine and the thing every other Marine strives to be, and are often portrayed as being the last bastion against the Tyranid Hive Fleets - they've even got a tremendous Heroic Sacrifice going for them, when the Tyranids were thwarted at massive cost to the Ultramarines on the planet of Macragge. The fact that the Codex was written by an Ultramarines fanboy has not gone unnoticed. There's also Marneus Calgar, who really deserves an entry all of his own.

Video Games

Reala in Tales Of Destiny 2. Born in an almost very ridiculous way, and she suddenly gains a lot of wisdom right off bat. The protagonist Kyle, who happens to be the son of the previous hero Stahn, immediately got fixated on her, she got along just fine with everyone, she gets to be the one who lectures Kyle the most (especially near the end), is not afraid in the face of imminent death, and worst of all... she is a Spotlight Stealing Girl, that the plot is really heavily fixated on her, especially when it's revealed that she is The daughter of God, along with the Big Bad, who ends up rebelling. And then, in the ending, she's killed, and everyone returns to their timeline, with their adventure annulled. But then... she is the only one who came back and remembers all the adventures! Man. The second you see her in the opening sequences, that should be a hint of her Sue-ness.
Arcia in Granstream Saga is possibly one of the most disgusting examples in the gaming world. Absolutely everything including her "adorable" innocent laughter reeks of absolute Purity Sueness. This is emphasized even further by her contrast with the main character's other possible Love Interest, the dynamic and somewhat tomboyish Tsundere Laramee. While Laramee has a very no-nonsense and even pushy attitude in life, Arcia is pretty much of a Yamato Nadeshiko who's unable to conceive of any negative feeling in herself or others and who can't stick up for herself. If you choose to sacrifice her at the end, you also find out that she's a celestial being and that she was researching everybody. She then gets sent back. If being able to so easily cheat the viewer out of what was supposed to be a dramatic sacrifice doesn't clinch it, nothing will.

Web Comics

Rikk in Fans; although the nature of the comic and it's parodying / homaging of fandom means he's more than likely intended as a parody (and indeed, many strips often play with the fact that a Pure Sue at times just isn't cut out for harsh realities of life and war), he strays a little too close at times to fulfilling this trope in completely seriousness. As if it wasn't enough that he's pretty much The Messiah, meaning he's loved and adored by almost everyone he comes into contact with (and if they don't worship the ground he walks on, then you can damn well be sure that they're a bad guy), he's capable of inspiring huge crowds with the power of his almost entirely improvised speeches, he's almost flawless (and is very self-perceptive of the relatively few flaws he does have) and has two women fighting tooth-and-claw over him throughout the entire strip (and by the end of the strip they've agreed to share him). Although the author acknowledged the potential for Mary Sue in the character and took steps to remedy this by pairing him up with the kinky, self-destructive Perky Goth Alisin, thus hinting at some hidden kinks , this in some ways just makes it worse, because her near-nymphomania means that on top of everything else, he's getting fantastic sex on a regular basis as well.
Interestingly enough, Jim Goodlaw in David Gonterman's FoxFire fits this trope. Within the first couple strips, he has Stan Lee praise him for his artistic ability and offer an instructional video with the suggestion that he could work for Marvel someday (although one unintended interpretation of this scene that makes it untold levels of hilarious is that Stan Lee was playing a really mean practical joke). From that point on, pretty much everybody that meets Jim simply won't shut up about how awesome he is, how cool his artwork is, and several girls want to date him.

Close Stuff

Be: Well, what did you go and do that for? We can't put them in Canon Sue, we can't put them here, where the bloody hell are they supposed to go?

Rebochan: I have restored all of the Canon Sue examples because they were removed without warning or discussion. Please discuss this topic on the Canon Sue Discussion page so there will be consensus.

Decide the fate of the examples here

Rebochan: The fate of the examples has been decided - they are staying but with much stricter standards. As part of the cleanup process, I pulled any entries that had started gathering justifying edits, and a few that seemed questionable. If you want a contested Sue entry included on the page, justify why here so there can be consensus. If you think a Sue entry on the page now should not be there, cut it, put on discussion, and we'll debate it. End of edit wars.

I also cut a few that are describing the wrong trope and they have since been exported to the correct trope pages.

The First Cleanup

Lots of Fushigi Yuugi fangirls accuse Miaka Yuuki of being a Mary Sue since she's well-loved by lots of bishonen, is ditzy but good-hearted, gets everything to work for her in the end, etc. They conveniently forget that Miaka can be bratty and selfish sometimes, as well as often making bad decisions that come back to bite her and others in the ass, with consequences ranging from merely running gags to serious feuds and misunderstandings.
- The general argument for Miaka as a Sue is that none of those consequences are ever depicted as specifically being her fault, and most of them don't affect her directly, just the people around her. Plus, the entire rest of the cast (apart from most of the Seiryuu Seishi) love her and forgive her— that is, they would, if they ever held anything against her in the first place.
Unit 13 from Hayate The Combat Butler. In the one episode he appears, he gets the entire cast in awe of himself, intentionally exhibits what character flaws he does have as part of a Xanatos Gambit to fix a strain in Nagi and Hayate's relationship, and delivers an epic speech before dying in a Heroic Sacrifice to save earth from a meteorite. And he's played completely straight, which would classify him as I Am Not Making This Up material seeing how every other sue on the show is played for comedy.
- This editor thought this was supposed to be at jab at Hayate's own ultra-competence.

Comic Books

Gwen Stacy of Spider Man, post-mortem. Originally, she was a Tsundere with some pretty crazy mood swings, but any work discussing her since she was dropped off a bridge paints her into an innocent, beautiful, intelligent, perfect woman. The graphic novel by Alex Ross, Marvels, even goes so as far to turn her into Too Good for This Sinful Earth.
- Some writers have tried to subvert this and remind people that Gwen was you know, human via flashback storylines. Usually they go too far in the other direction though, such as the one in which she was retconned into having the Green Goblin's superpowered love children. No, really. The writers are usually crucified by the fanbase after any attempt, regardless.
Maria in The Sound of Music, but then again that one was a VERY white-washed version of the true story it was based on. Or maybe it's just Julie Andrews being there...
- But... she has confidence in sunshine! And rain! Certainly somebody with that much confidence is destined to be somebody with no flaws.
Marius Pontmercy of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables is a beautiful, heroic, passionate, idealistic stand-in for Hugo himself, down to the climax of the sprawling novel centered on a short-lived rebellion in Paris which Hugo actually observed in his youth.
- He is also nigh unto oblivious to everything except Cosette and said revolution, to the point where he's acquired the affectionate Fan Nickname of "Doltboy."
- While not a "pure" example, Mina from Dracula also has many characteristics of a Purity Sue. In fact, one could argue that she's the Victorian equivalent of a Yamato Nadeshiko except for the fact that the readers of the time probably viewed her as 'too active' and wanting too many rights...
Maria from Metropolis. In the book, everyone but no one worships the ground she walks on and would happily die for her, she's the most beautiful creature ever to draw breath, and every word from her mouth is taken as a divine utterance. Aside from being a painfully transparent Virgin Mary Expy, she's also part of a Generation Xerox which included the protagonist's mother Hel, an even worse Purity Sue whose Death by Childbirth still drives all the guilt the story runs on.
- There's a book? In the film, she's actively hated by the rich half of the town for being a Soapbox Sadie, constantly needs rescuing, and takes a backseat to the Aesop about economics. Admittedly, she is able to get two warring factions to cooperate, but she gets help in that and it isn't easy.
Some of Anne McCaffrey's heroines are extremely Sueish. Especially Menolly, who's a musical genius, kind, generous, brave, hated for no reason by mean people, loved and admired by people who are just as good as she is, etc. Killashandra's also a good example.
- Oh, man, Killashandra practically deserves her own page — after her Special Perfect Specialness is tragically ignored by her music teachers (because, you know, being relegated to the chorus is a fate worse than death), she pretty much magically winds up becoming the Best Crystal Singer Evar. It's already a bit of a special snowflake's job in the first place, but after our heroine gets an inexplicable free pass from the painful and occasionally deadly physical ailment that comes with adaptation to life on the planet's surface — just because, one assumes, it's so much prettier just to have her wake up all magically ready to go... (That, and I'm not sure there's a single man in the books who didn't want to sleep with her.) Coincidentally (or, you know, not), Anne McCaffrey mentions in the introduction to one of her Pern novels that being a singer was her dream for quite some time.
- Though to be fair, Killa is quite the diva drama queen, which is obvious to the reader, and it takes her a hundred-something years to grow out of that. Definitely a Special Snowflake type, but this troper thinks she's just unpleasant enough at times to have her flaws.
- I still maintain that Menolly doesn't really belong here. She wasn't adored by everyone; not everyone who didn't adore her was necessarily portrayed as unsympathetic; and the only people who actually hated her were Pona and her clique. Also, despite all of her other traits, she's never described as beautiful.
  - She managed to hook up with Sebell, who is apparently her dream guy (despite/because of starting out as one of her teachers) and quite a bit older than her, and Jaxom appears to be keen on her during his hormonal phase in The White Dragon. This troper was left with a distinct impression that she was at least fairly attractive.
  - Menolly was mistaken as a male once (it was in the first book in the Harper Hall trilogy, by a dragonrider that noticed her running from the leading edge of Thread). Whatever she is, she's not a paragon of feminine beauty.
Bella Swan from the Twilight saga. As soon as she moves to the pitiful, backwater town of Forks, she gathers a sizable fanboy following at school, despite describing herself as rather plain. Even worse, the fanboys continue to flock after despite the fact that she pre-judges them based on appearances, shunning one of them because he looks like a "chess club nerd." And then, of course, the enigmatic, 108 year old vampire Edward falls for her... because she smells good. And he has apparently never loved a girl so strongly before, despite having spent a hundred years as a hormonal teenager. And her only flaw, besides low self-esteem? Clumsiness, so that Edward can conveniently come to her rescue all the time. Of course.
- Edward sets her straight later in the book and basically calls her an idiot for whining about being plain when she's actually very attractive.
- This editor has just started reading the books (though, admittedly, is only about nine chapters in and never had a high opinion of the books, anyway), and has noticed that anything Bella does only comes to the benefit of others: she's paired up two couples and cooks (and, I'm assuming, does pretty much all the household chores) for her father who works all the time (even weekends!) and just likes to watch "the game". And that's just two examples! In fact, the only things she ever does wrong are by accident or because of a misunderstanding. Or, as mentioned above, she's "clumsy"—whereby she is immediately forgiven. He could be wrong, though.
Recurring Stargate Atlantis character Lucius Lavin attains Mary Sue status through the use of various forms of Phlebotinum. In his debut episode, "Irresistable," he has discovered a drug that makes him produce a pheromone that causes people love and admire him, except Shepard who has a cold through most of the episode. By the end of the episode, he's convinced Dr. Weir to marry him (probably), has had the "Ancient Gene" installed in him, and everyone cheers him on as he becomes able to pilot one of the gene-locked Jumpers (Rodney even says, "Fly, Lucius, fly!"). Fortunately, a cure/vaccine is discovered by the end of the episode, rendering Lucius' pheromone useless. However, in a later episode he attains Mary Sue status again through use of an Ancient personal force-field generator and hired goons. No one bothers to tell him it's out of juice at the end of the episode, however, before leaving while he performs his favorite trick, letting some kid try to kick him in the groin.
- I think that makes him a deconstruction of the trope.
Carly Shay from iCarly. She has a popular webshow (getting several hundred thousand hits a week, which would make it one of the most popular webcasts in the world in Real Life), and as a result of this, she and her friends are very popular at her school, both with the students and with the staff (save for the occasional Sadist Teacher). She's a nearly straight-A student, only missing out on straight-As due to her Single-Issue Wonk history teacher Mr. Devlin. Finally, most of the boys in the show, including her best friend Freddy, are attracted to her.
- Still, she's a far cry more likable than Megan, the character she played on Drake And Josh, who also happens to be a Mary Sue in certain ways.

Be: OK, the first one of those that needs to go back is Carly Shay. When the only thing going against her Sueishness is that she's more likable than another character who has nothing to do with the one question aside from sharing the same actress, that's a pretty solid example. And while I'm here, why delete the Ultramarines example again? One complaint does not nullify an example, especially when said complaint was already dealt with. Reposting the exact same thing as I justified the example with last time around:

I guess you're the same Unknown Troper that doesn't think Calgar is a God Moder, to which I say pshaw. I don't disagree that they've been like that since their introduction, but I don't see how that makes it excusable in the first place, and you can't use the ACI to defend not calling them Sues because a) by that tack you could probably cut a good number of all the examples and b) I can just go "sorry mate they're actually the heralds of the emperor's will and the last bastion protecting humanity from the forces of chaos" with the end result that there's fluff to support us both but there's more supporting my standpoint than there is yours.
The Smurfs are specifically stated as being the greatest possible thing a Space Marine could become - even if you're going to whine about what measure a Marine is to begin with, that alone is still a serious Sue quality because everybody looks up to them. They have no flaws whatsoever, in comparison to things like the Blood Angels' Blood Rage, the Imperial Fists missing a couple of organs or the Iron Hands' suspicious ties to the Adeptus Mechanicus, but they've been responsible for some of the Imperium's greatest victories, had a Heroic Sacrifice or two to garnish and their head honcho is currently being depicted as the greatest human warrior in the entire universe.
To summarise - If the Necrons can be thought of as Sues, so too can the Smurfs. They've been pretty bad in the past, but their Sueish qualities have just been ramped up to obscene levels lately. Please don't erase the entry again without coming here first.

Rebochan: I thought I remember the iCarly entry being contested in the past, so I took it out for discussion. As I recall, the reason it came up was that the original argument basically called her a Sue for being the main character, and the current entry does the same thing. I'm still not familiar with the show, I can't judge.

As for the Ultramarines example, right now all we have is one person that agrees and one person that doesn't. Again, I can't weigh in further than that because I'm not familiar with the subject material, my only barometer was whether it had been constested at all and whether that had been resolved. Bear with us, this is the first time the Sue pages are actually being gone over with a fine-toothed comb.

Ethereal Mutation: Gwen Stacy just sounds like fairly standard Too Good for This Sinful Earth. Rebochan: Agreed - that was my take as well, plus it seemed to lean too heavily on Depending on the Writer.

Close The First Cleanup

Rebochan: I pulled just this one for discussion:

Sora from Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto ~Natsu no Sora~ has quite a bit of this. Sure, she suffers from bouts of occasional shyness, but the mere fact that her character design is much prettier that of the rest of the cast should already ring some alarm bells.

It doesn't sell her as a Sue, it just says she is one and she is pretty.

Dentaku: What the heck does this even mean? Why should anyone have to "sell" an example? You're not making any sense. Anyway, I pulled her myself since she's by far not as bad as most of the other examples. She sure has some sue-ness, but generally leans more toward the messiah.

Austin: On the question of whether Jesus should be in God Mode Sue, that's only if you take it too literally. The GMS page says that the Purity Sue's power is their overwhelming specialness, and that's more Jesus' deal than being so much more powerful than everyone else.

Rebochan: He's a god. And explicitly the Messiah. Of course he's special and of course he's omnipotent. We've been through this before - we're not putting mythological figures on the Sue pages because flat characterizations combined with unrealistically incredible uniqueness, perfect romantic partners, and feats covers every single mythological creation in existence.

Austin: Don't assume everyone's read the same discussions you have. I had no awareness that mythology was discouraged in these articles.

Rebochan: Mostly on God-Mode Sue, since mythological figures are generally more known for their awesome powers then their sparkling blue eyes.

Rebochan: Took out Pearl from The Scarlet Letter - she was a complete and utter hellion for most of the book.

Qit el-Remel: Phèdre from the Kushiel series did not have Kaleidoscope Eyes. They were dark brown (obscure terminology aside). I've actually got my doubts on her being a Sue at all (many of her listed "Sue traits" seem to merely reflect her status as a courtesan/spy, and others are debatable) but Your Mileage May Vary.

Rebochan: Feel free to pull the example for discussion if you think it's particularly bad - I wasn't familiar with the work, I just moved that example here from another page.

Rebochan: Fast Eddie, I do not want to get involved in an edit war with you. But we've already had this discussion that Mythological figures can't be Sues. They have no authors to show favoritism (oral tradition) towards, and a lot of them only picked up certain traits after multiple tellings (in other words...Depending on the Writer). They are all flat characters with exaggerated traits. And mainly, if we include them, we need to include every single mythological figure in the human consciousness because they are all a pile of Mary Sue traits. And Common Mary Sue Traits do not make a Sue.

Fast Eddie: Can you direct me to this discussion that "we" had? I see some instances in this discussion where you have tried to lay down this rule, with people arguing against the proposition, but missed where people agreed to it.

Ethereal Mutation: Mythology and oral tradition are the biggest argument against Mary Sue being inherently bad. Anyway, they probably don't really count on the simple basis that they're fluid stories with about a million different variations that all pretty much depend on the storyteller. There's no such thing as Canon with them because they exist before anything approximating "official" versions. It would be like saying Rhett Butler is a Marty Stu because of some crappy set of fanfics that cast him as such. There's also the fact that they come from ancient civilizations that just don't really know any better.

Personally, I'm going to just get the Purity Personified page on the ball so people have something neutral they can list the paragons of such in. It seems it's mostly this page that gets the mythological creatures, with some being put on God-Mode Sue (mostly religious texts... I can't imagine listing Jesus as being anything more than a big infraction of the Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgment).

Rebochan: Actually, Ethereal Mutation, you just made the point about why "Mary Sue" can't be applied to mythological and oral tradition, so it has little bearing on Mary Sue being good or bad. But thanks for phrasing that better than I did. The Purified Personified page would do a lot of good to get some of the less Sue-worthy examples off of here and into a neutral setting.

Rebochan: Oh for crying out loud, you can't just rewrite the article to make your example count. Well, you can. And I'm tired of arguing. Police the damn page yourself, apparently the discussion isn't worth it.

Burnt Paper: Deleted Nia because she doesn't fit our own defintion of Purity Sue:

"Oh, sure, she might smile, offer encouragement, write articles, and other such things, but she gets such a disproportionately positive response that breaks the Willing Suspension Of Disbelief."

"The important underlying element here, however, is that the character doesn't really do anything to truly justify the treatment she receives. Decidedly subjective traits and actions have other characters latch onto her. It's the fact that the other characters are just filling the blanks and elevating her to her superior position of specialness that makes her one of these."

These are the necessary traits of a Sue: breaking suspension of disbelief by having unnatural interactions with other characters. Nia never broke suspension of disbelief nor had any kind of decidedly subjective action latched onto her. She was well-regarded by the gang because she stood for them against Adiane and they discovered she was abandoned by her father. The Gurren Brigade is composed of a bunch of kind-hearted fools. They're not "badasses" like the article implies but rather brutes with good intentions. It's impossible for such a type of personality to not be charmed by someone of a more sophisticated background who has suddenly been thrown away by her previous environment. It's the "lost little puppy" syndrome. No blanks are filled by the rest of the cast.

The traits of Nia that match the Purity Sue description are mere "specification" and are also already described perfectly in Everythings Better With Princesses, White Prince and Mysterious Waif.

Ethereal Mutation: I got around to making Purity Personified, so let's start filtering examples that really belong there over.

Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here, for now. It belongs in Parody Sue, since I know that the author made Chance the way he is and the way he's perceived on purpose. (There was more ambiguity than he intended, but he wasn't expecting the Peter Sellers interpretation.)

A perhaps unintentional parody is in the satire Being There, in which most everyone comes to be fascinated by and even in awe of Chauncey Gardiner, a brilliant-yet-humble socio-political thinker who brings hope and clarity to a complex world with his simple sayings, looks described (in the novel) as a cross between Cary Grant and Ted Kennedy, and elegant manners. No one can dig up a single bad thing about his past; he's a man with nothing to hide...of course, the reader/viewer knows that his real name is Chance the Gardener, who is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, mentally challenged, was isolated from the world until middle-age, picked up what little he knew of it from TV, and happens to look like someone intelligent because of his nice clothes and manners. Thus, the poor guy is passive by nature and while he's a good person at heart, the things the other characters love about him are all based on their preconceptions and misinterpretations of what he says and does, which he is virtually incapable of correcting due to his mental shortcomings.
- Sapphire Forever: Moved the above to Parody Sue. Thanks.

Sara: Removed Orihime and Colette. Their oh so pure and virtuous ways actually cause them a great deal of trouble. Colette's nearly get her killed.

Read: Removed Nia Teppelin. Not only was Simon angsty for three episodes after she was introduced, everything else in the entry is just empty oversimplification of the events in the show. N Ot to mention they even tried to use a false, completely made-up reference to a "word of god". Ugh.

Shoebox Removed this:

Sara Stanley from L. M. Montgomery's The Story Girl was probably intentionally created to be a Mary Sue in order to give her a sense of other-worldliness. She is incredibly charismatic and beautiful, her storytelling abilities can only be described as magical, and the narrator is unrequitedly in love with her. It is a testament to the skill of the author that she is not really all that annoying.
- Averted in the TV adaptation, where her storytelling abilities and perfection is unceremoniously jettisoned.

First off, yes, she's an incredibly charismatic performer - it's implied that the character eventually grows up to be a famous actress - but Montgomery deliberately balances that out with many mundane imperfections. She's specifically described as not beautiful and in fact is obviously jealous of her really pretty cousin; she's hopelessly undomestic and can't cook (a very big deal in those days); she has a quick temper that leads her into frequent petty quarrels; and while she's noticeably more intelligent and sensitive than her (younger) friends, she's also as realistically gullible and naiive as any child of her time. On top of everything, this troper is not as familiar with the TV series but seems to remember an episode entitled 'The Story Girl Gets Her Name' which specifically references her story-telling ability as a Very Special Trait.

Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this subpoint and put it here for posterity. Lampshade Hanging a Purity Sue does not make him cease to be one — especially since this character is still meant to be taken dead seriously. Neither does incompetent direction on the part of the author whose avatar the Sue is. Still, it is a lovely point...

I wonder if I'm the only person on the planet who thinks this was a Lampshade Hanging. I mean, you have characters (played by competent actors) practically mugging for the camera!

Rebochan: Somebody linked me to this. It's apparently had someone else trying to clean some of it up, but I figured I feel masochistic.

Deconstructed and played straight in Kaleido Star. On one hand, Sora Naegino possesses many of the typical traits (sweet, gentle, friendly, naïve to the extreme) but she doesn't get everyone's appreciation and fawning love right from the start and has to work hard for them. On the other, Sophie Oswald plays it up some more, but she's actually dead from before the series started, and her death causes genuine problems to her partner older brother Leon, who becomes a Jerkass out of his pain and guilt and is obsessed with finding a replacement of sorts in the stage.

Let's see. Rational plot development. Having to work hard for the praise she earns, just like everyone else. I'm sorry, that's not a Sue. That's a nice person that isn't cut a break and handed the world on a silver platter. You know, a real character! The other definitely isn't, at best Purity Personified. There's a big difference.

Arguably, Tohru Honda from Fruits Basket is a Purity Sue — done more or less right, or at least bereably. Let's considere the settlement of the story, how fucked up the Sohma are, how Tohru helps them through their problems and how the manga doesn't 100% play her chara types straight (specially, by making her a mix of Polly Anna and Stepford Smiler). Now, her super shiny and sparkly nature makes a lot of sense...

Still isn't a Mary Sue. "I hate her!" is amazingly still not a Mary Sue! There's no "Mary Sue" "done right" - a Mary Sue done right is an insufferable pile of horrible writing. She's Purity Personified if she's not a Sue.

Ryouko Asakura outwardly appears to be this trope at first, as she's a pretty, popular, gentle Class Representative who wants to reach out for the brilliant yet sociopathic Haruhi. However, she turns out to be...something else entirely...

Still not a Mary Sue either. As pointed out numerous times, she's a Yandere, full stop. You may also notice that despite being popular (note: popularity is not automatically a qualifier), she's not shown to be particularly skilled at anything.

Mary Poppins. Let's hear it for a Sue whom everyone in the audience likes. (Alternatively, let's hear five reasons why a beloved character can't possibly be a Sue.)
- At least she's usually quite cold/stern while she's bending the laws of the universe to her whim and making everyone love her.
  - Mary Poppins is so universally liked that CAP- one of the most audacious Moral Guardian sites- gave her a perfect score, because what would normally qualify as witchcraft was overruled by "Angelic Symbolism."
  - She's another example of Hollywoodized Sue. In the book, Mary's quite different, being portrayed as a stern, haughty nanny who only opens up on one of her adventures - then denies the whole thing ever happened afterward. She's aloof to anyone who doesn't think she's the end-all, be-all.

Just changed the whole thing to the Magical Nanny trope. Because Mary Poppins is pretty much just like the rest of them. And sorry, no. If a character is actually liked, they're not a Sue because that means they were written well. She's a Magical Nanny and Purity Personified. I realize there's this idea that the only way to not be a Mary Sue is to be a miserable pile of fail...oh wait, sorry. We still have Anti-Sue. My mistake.

The way Anakin was talked up The Phantom Menace in parts of the movie (and deleted scenes) certainly comes close to this.

But he isn't at all. Being foretold to be The Messiah isn't a qualifier. And if it was, he'd have been God-Mode Sue anyway if he wasn't the exact opposite of The Messiah.

High School Musical has Gabriella Montez. She's smart, she's cute and she has the sweetest giggle ever. In fact, she's so pure of heart things crumble when she leaves for university, prompting boyfriend Troy to tell her she's the only reason East High can work together. She also counts as a Relationship Sue and crosses into a Sympathetic Sue whenever Troy starts looking out for his best interests.

Right, nobody is that many different type of Sues. Gabriella is a poorly written character, but she's really got to be one type. This can probably be reworked into something better.

Anne Rice's characters have long had a touch of the Mary Sue about them, but Tarquin Blackwood from Blackwood Farm reached new depths. Young, impossibly and extravagantly rich, heir to an American gothic plantation, sexually precocious, impossibly fascinating to the vampires of the series with a Deep Dark Secret in his past... Basically, all kinds of special.
- Replace "gothic plantation" with "French castle" and you have Lestat himself. Leave the "gothic plantation" in and you can just as easily describe Louis. There are only a few characters in the entire series that do not have obscene amounts of wealth; the main characters usually call them Lunch.

So...they're rich. That's...it? I mean, I don't read these books, but all it seems to say is "They're rich." And I really have trouble thinking of a vampire like Lestat as pure.

L. Frank Baum's portrayal of Santa Claus. He does nothing except make toys for children...and, for that reason alone, he's adored by everything in existence that's not pure evil. (And everything that is pure evil wants to destroy him.) Whenever he's in any actual trouble, he can just count on his "elves" to do all the work...including waging a war of extermination against some demons of sorts that have the gall to kidnap him. We know what that means.

That's...how Santa Claus is always portrayed. In everything.

Ozma in the Oz books also fits this trope, perhaps even more so.

...pray tell how?

Doctor Who: Jenny from the eponymous episode "The Doctor's Daughter" qualifies as a canon example. She's incredibly smart, beautiful, perky in personality, a highly-trained and extremely capable soldier and acrobat and manages to rate clean, form-fitting fatigues where the other soldiers have dirty, rugged ones. She effortlessly seduces a male soldier guarding her into allowing her to escape. Of course, she is a genetically-engineered clone soldier, so we might accept that she is going to be pre-programmed with some of these traits, but when we consider that she was cloned from the Doctor himself then she starts to slide into Fan Fic territory. She confirms her Sue status when she manages to overcome her one possible flaw - her blind dedication to the war she has been programmed to fight - and even selflessly throws herself in the path of a laser blast to save the Doctor, only to come back to life once the Doctor and his companions have left, thanks to her handy Time Lord DNA. Oh, and to add a meta-textual layer to her Sueness, Georgia Moffett - the actress who played Jenny - really is the daughter of one of the actors to portray the Doctor, and even dated David Tennant for a while.

Hey ho, Jenny is still not a Sue and it's been done to death a million times. But thanks for playing the "I hate women that come into contact with The Doctor" game.

Now I'm going to smash my head into a wall until I forget all about it.

Rebochan: And one last thing - I should really not have to explain why whining about the President of the United States on this page is poor taste.

Shoebox: I do have to offer some support for the Ozma of Oz example - not only is she the Ruler of Oz, but every time she shows up, Baum goes on and on and on about how beautiful and sweet and dainty and beloved she is, to the point where it basically amounts to older man in love with ideal young creation. There's an entire book, The Road to Oz, that's actually built around all the Ozites and every single character from Baum's other books attending Ozma's super-spectacular birthday party, the like of which the world has never seen. Granted she's a bit more active within the plot that a standard Purity Sue, but not by much. May be more akin to The Wesley, come to think of it.

Rebochan: Oh, she may well be a Sue. The example on hand was just empty. And since I know nothing of the Oz books besides catching wind that some people don't like her, I couldn't add anything. Also, I think a Purity Sue can still be active in the plot - the main issue is that they are given acclaim they haven't earned.

Rebochan: Since somebody added the Oz Santa back and I'm a glutton for punishment, how exactly is Frank Baum's depiction of Santa any different from the numerous other depictions of him? The guy is a saint - literally. He flies on magic reindeer perfectly granting the wishes of children out of the goodness of his heart. When that's the standard depiction, I have a hard time imagining a Purity Sue version of him, but I'm not that familiar with the Oz books. Can someone enlighten me or at least note that in the entry?

The Tambourine Man:I'd like to contest the Aigis entry:

Aigis, despite being a machine, fits a lot of the criteria (though justified because she was programmed or built that way). Prettiest girl in the cast, according to the cast themselves? Check (she's the only one whose introduction subplot involves the entire male cast trying to hit on her). Innocence and naivete-based flaws that don't actually cause any problems besides extra cuteness and annoying other female characters? Check. Last of her elite and mysterious kind? Check. Talks to animals? Check. Just mysteriously knows things? Check. Powerful enough to subdue the entire rest of the cast despite being outnumbered seven to one? Check. And everyone stops what they're doing to gather around her and help facilitate her personal subplot because they love her so much, when the rest of the cast has to deal with theirs either on their own or in small, plot-relevant groups? Check. This only gets worse in FES, where she takes over the protagonist's role in the story and everything that made him unique, and she's assigned a special Tarot card for her new Social Link, Aeon, which not only wasn't in the original game, but governs several of the most powerful Personae in the roster. About the only thing she doesn't have is a magically enchanting singing voice and a royal pedigree.

A big part of this trope is that the character is liked far more than anyone else. Yeah, Aigis is well-liked by the rest of the cast, but not more than anyone else. SEES was a very close-knit group. It doesn't matter if her S. Link was good: so were Mitsuru's and Mamoru's. That she gets her own special arcana in FES is a bit outlandish, but she wasn't a link in the original, unlike the other girls in your group, which seems to be a strike against Sue-ness. And all the girls in your party are acknowledged as being pretty, and Akihiko and Junpei don't show any interest in her after finding out she's a robot. And calling the antishadow units "elite and mysterious" doesn't seem accurate: They're mysterious because not much about them was said, and they apparently weren't very elite, since they junked all of them in favor of a private army of small children. I do think she was lacking in characterisation, but I'd hardly say she's a sue.

I think what made her Sueish to me was that she doesn't fit in with the rest of the cast, but they talk about her more than every other character; even when things are focusing on another character, there will usually be somebody who talks about Aigis instead of the current goings-on. Her subplot involves the entire cast reassuring her in her humanity over the course of the game, but they don't get that close with each other. Akihiko and Ken (and briefly, Shinji) have their problems that the girls and Junpei don't get involved in (with the exception of Mitsuru, a few times). Fuuka handles her problems with Natsuki mostly alone (until she gets involved in the Dark Hour and it becomes a SEES problem). Yukari and Mitsuru have their own problems that they handle on their own and together. Junpei has friction with Yukari, Akihiko, and the main character, but his major developments are with Chidori and, later and to a much lesser degree, Fuuka. Aigis, on the other hand, has every other cast member surrounding her at her Persona upgrade and talking about how she wants to protect everyone. Yes, SEES is a tight-knit group, but their relationships are of varying types and intensities with each other; Aigis comes in with no previous bonds to anyone and so loves everyone equally, and they come out all at once to love her back. The only person who isn't immediately positively inclined toward her is Yukari, and she eventually comes around. We don't see that kind of universal support for any other character, even if her bonds with them aren't specifically stronger than their strongest relationship with someone else. As to the other anti-Shadow robots; they scrapped them all in favor of an army of children except Aigis. For whatever reason, she was preserved and the others weren't; if she wasn't somehow more special than the rest of the others, why keep her around?
And then there's the ending. If casually shoving every other potential love interest aside to be the one whose lap the main character dies in, because the writers have decided that this relationship exists independently of the player's input (and specifically denies the player that input) isn't Sue material, I don't know what is. I know FES changes that, but adding in a Tarot card from an entirely different deck doesn't help her case (especially if you don't do her Social Link, and then the game just dumps her on you anyway); if part of what makes a Sue is how she gets uncomfortably wedged into the cast, well, there you go. It's like having a fourteenth Organization XIII member. More than that, though, is that all of the main cast (particularly the girls) have entirely reasonable flaws and problems because they were written to be the kind of people you might find going to school. Aigis is a magical robot girl and so comes off more like a traditonal sci-fi/fantasy JRPG character, and the game tends to write her as being somehow superior to the flesh-and-blood girls in your party because of it— she's prettier, she's stronger, she's impossibly devoted, she never gets angry or upset that you're dating other girls, she's immune to petty things like the memory loss caused by the avatar of death, she talks to animals, she's not insecure except about her purpose in life (which, when she asserts it, is to generically protect everyone instead of having some specific goal or motivation in mind like everyone else) and so on. She manages to have the least amount of personality, but the most attention paid to her by the story. All of her character traits would be ordinary in an ordinary fantasy game, but in a modern occult-fantasy with realistic, flawed and three-dimensional characters, she's the only one specifically designed to be "generic, but likeable" with no perceptible serious flaws, and later on, eventually the universe just starts warping in around her to make her more important (ie, FES and The Answer).

The Tambourine Man: I see. I admittedly wasn't in the habit of talking to everyone on a regular basis, so I wasn't aware she got that much attention. Should I put the old entry back up, or write a new one?

Archived Discussion Main / PuritySue