Lale: Moved the male examples since we have male versions of Mary Sue.
Frau Blucher: Surely Amy from Little Women isn't a Mary Sue? She's depicted, at least in the original novel, as spoilt and selfish, easily the most flawed of the four. If any of them are annoyingly devoid of faults it's consumptive Beth.
Lale: Beth's afraid of her own shadow. Kind and sweet, yes, but with serious mental as well as physical problems, I think. Amy, on the other hand, is just the picture of perfection in the author's eyes in the second half. That chapter where she and Jo go on their calls and she's the model of politeness, especially to their aunts... the chapter where The Libby cheats her out of the art table at the fair and she resolves to grin and bear it and love her enemies and is praised by the author for doing so... the endless references to her beauty and grace and popularity. There's a constant motif of how Amy and Jo are opposites, and between them, Amy is the ideal. Maybe Alcott was trying to be nice to her sister, because she develops from a spoiled brat into a Mary Sue between halves that were published separately.
Ack Sed: Can we have Tohru Honda? She's impossibly perfect and pure of heart in the anime,if only because it stopped before the manga ,which went on to show that she's almost as angst-ridden as the boys.
Lale: Never seen that show, but if she is portrayed as truly "impossibly perfect and pure of heart" in that incarnation, then yes.
Kizor: A random note to amuse and horrify you: A friend had the idea of a story where the protagonist jumps from setting from setting, destroying Mary Sues, not realizing that he's becoming one himself. Look for this once my writing quality advances past the "perverting God's creation" stage - I could make a Self-Insert that would knock your socks off, and I'd finally get to use the line "I'm the Avatar, bitch!". The only problem is that I'm not comfortable with having my fictional representation bed Hermione.
Next Door To Alice: Kizor, can't you make your s.i. the matchmaker type? Which... actually, I think there should be a mention of the Yenta!Mary Sues in this entry, but can't see where to work it in.
Cassius335: Kizor, don't suppose you could use a sidekick?
Duckluck: Does anyone else get the impression that Hermione from Harry Potter is a Mary Sue? She's an acknowledged author avatar and, especially in the last book, is the one who constantly comes up with clever solutions after a moment's thought. Hermione is also the default problem solver. If there is no specific reason for it to be Harry (or occasionally Ron) who comes up with the answer, it will be Hermione. Always.
But Hermione has lots of flaws, too. She can be ruthless and is occasionnaly made fun of, in the text. I think that would disqualify her a Mary Sue. However I think that Lily Potter qualifies.
Lale: Being an Author Avatar usually applies to Fan Fiction. Hermione may be based on the author, but she's very flawed and human. If I had an accurate Author Avatar in a story, I guarantee you she would not be perfect. I don't think Lily qualifies either. Remember having one or two qualities from this page isn't enough to automatically label a character a Mary Sue. To create with none of them would be... well, boring.
Can you name any flaw Lily had? Everybody loved her, she was pretty, kind, righteous, clever, just as good at Potion as Snape and she saved Harry via the power of her luv. That's why I think she qualifies.
Lale: Like you said — she acted too righteous.
All right, I am not a Native English speaker and I thought righteous was a positively conotated word here. By ritheous I meant she stood up for victim in front of a bully, thought Voldemort, etc. Doesn't count as "flaws" in my book, so i reiterate my question.
Lale: If anyone really were entirely righteous, that would be good. But humans, being what they are, always tend to come up a little bit short. Some people act like they're perfectly righteous and that whatever they think about anyone and anything is right. Lilly strikes me as like that sometimes.
Ah, I see. That's what I call self-righteous. Hmm, do you have some source about this characterization of Lily, or is it just a feeling? (I'm not sure I disagree, but I'm not sure it's not my knee-jerk reaction to her Mary-Sue-ness either.) It seems to me that the text only sees her as good rather than self-righteous.
Lale: Probably true, but what the author intends means nothing.
Wait, wait! Aren't Mary Sues always Misaimed Fandom in that they're supposed to be uber-awesome, cool an lovable Author Avatar but make the audience gags at them because they're a Creator's Pet? Basically Author Avatar + Creator's Pet = Mary Sue / Marty Stu.
Lale: Probably, at least early in Fan Fiction. Several modern Fan Fics now apparently contain intentional Mary Sues. And of course, the difference between "perfect" and "boring" differs between cultures. What's a Mary Sue to Americans may be a Yamato Nadeshiko to Japanese.
... and here I thought I was up to date with Fanfic trends... Intentionnal? O_oI think one thing is true is that it's difficult to talk in Mary Sue terms about canonical characters. Maybe a Canon Sue entry would be interesting.
Roland: A silly question, but one I feel should probably be asked. At exactly -which- point does a character stop being a hero (many of whom ARE, by dint of narrative significance, etc, far superior to your normal person in personality, appearance, and/or abilities) and start being a Mary Sue? Surely simple perfection alone doesn't cut it- otherwise such characters as Beowulf, Gandalf, or hell, even Cloud would be Mary Sue.
Lale: That's why I've always hated this concept outside of Fan Fiction. I've punched some of the most popular anime and literature characters into the Mary Sue litmus test, and they get the highest scores.
Fly: I agree. Can we just strike all these 'canon Sues' from the page? Aeris definitely isn't.
William Wide Web: Agreed as well. For example, if the last of the Time Lords is sent through that test he comes out as irredeemable.
Lale: Unfortunately, many writers actually do appear to follow that list and try to avoid giving any of the traits therein to their protagonist. But guess what? A protagonist-that-sucks sucks!
Tabby: To quote an old associate, who said it better than I ever could, a Mary Sue is bad writing. A character becomes a Sue when she is so PERFECT and SPECIAL and ALLURING that she's no longer believable as a character and it kills the story.
Tanto: Indeed. For all the Mary Sue litmus tests out there, the primary characteristic of the Sue belongs to the writer, not the character.
Fake Nog: Actually, the best 'test' I've seen (by which I mean, my favourite and I will fight for its honour etc.): If the so-called story withers away as the character grows greater and more lovable, the plot-and-friend-consuming character is a Mary Sue.
Lale: "This sort of character is one of The Oldest Ones in the Book, leaving aside angels, prophets, avatars and messiahs from religious scriptures, there are always the "Perfect Knights" and "Virtuous Maidens" in King Arthur-type stories, Galahad being the most extreme example." The Messiah.
Ununnilium: I want to add this to the page, but I'm not sure how: http://www.reallifecomics.com/archive/000707.html
Qit el-Remel: If Anita Blake is a "Sue," Ayla from the Earth's Children series definitely is: She's freakishly strong, phenomenal at everything she does, preternaturally beautiful, and overly self-effacing to boot. But let me know when there's a "Canon-Sue" page, since that's where both of them really belong.
Etrangere: How much like her creotor is Ayla? Cause that's a big factor in Anita Blake's 'Sue-ness'.
Lale: As was discussed up above, it's all in the presentation. She's beautiful and Extraordinarily Empowered, but how well is that written?
Qit el-Remel: I've heard that she looks a lot like a younger, idealized version of Auel. The quality of the books began to slip after The Valley of the Horses (way too much re-iteration).
And "Extraordinarily Empowered" is far too tame a description for Ayla as of The Plains of Passage. As I mentioned, if Auel is to be believed, we have her to thank for (among other things) domestic animals and the needle.
Hey, I really liked the books up until Plains. But it's pretty clear to me that Ayla has become a Sue—and I'm far from being the only one who's noticed.
Fake Nog: I blamed the series' decline on Jondalar's ongoing Wangst, myself. ....which is not constructive commentary, sorry. But - oh, my g-d, a Mary Sue / The Scrappy romance. Treble the bad.
Willy Four Eyes: Migrating the La Pucelle example to Canon Sue.
Looney Toons: In re:
Actually, I remember seeing a character listing a year or so before TNG reached the air, while the show was still in development, and Wesley was originally Leslie — Dr. Crusher's daughter. (Moments later) A quick Google search confirms my twenty-year-old memory...
DocTrain66: I believe the Dagny Taggart example should be moved over to Canon Sue.
- Prior to the David storyline, this isn't wildly out of character. After all, they trusted him for no reason, didn't they? What's more, there are several canonical ways to test for Yeerk infestation, so trusting people who pass these tests isn't that far off base.
- OBJECTION! David was certified as a non-Controller from the get-go - any Yeerk would've recognized the blue box as Andalite, or at least alien, technology (if not as an actual morphing cube), and certainly wouldn't have acted as careless with it as he was. Plus the fact that when they made the decision, the alternative was turning him over to the Yeerks. And they still didn't trust him fully; Marco didn't trust him at all.
Tanto: The first bit completely mischaracterizes the David arc for the reasons explained in the second bit, and the whole thing is Conversation In The Main Page.
Regarding the Naruto Entry: Am I the only person who's seen far too many Uchiha Sues/Stus(despite the small problem that Itachi/Madara slaughtered all of them, and I don't think him, Madara or Sasuke are too interested in breeding (And they're all practically Sues in their own right anyway)) to take the actual Uchihas seriously anymore, or Hyuuga characters with better range/skills/hair then Neji? Or even the Byaringan? Not to mention the outstanding number of other Jinchuuriki that are cats, wolves or dragons? I swear I saw a fanfic that said something about a Ten-Tailed /Jaguar/ >.>
Willy Four Eyes: And all of a sudden, everyone has the Kyuubi sealed inside 'em. Not to say that the Uchiha clan isn't already overplayed as it is. ZING!
On an unrelated note, I'm zapping the entry on Tohru from Fruits Basket because
Qit el-Remel: Zapping the bit about Varley's Titanides. Not only are they canon to their milieu, but the segment is biased and poorly explained.
Fenrir: This might get some flack, but this troper is nominating Kira Yamato, Athrun Zala, and Lacus Clyne in Gundam SEED Destiny. Nothing is really that much of an inconvenience for them. They're always right. Kira and Athrun's new mechs are more than just a few cuts above Shinn's Destiny Gundam, and this is all without taking into account the Plot Armor and the Curbstomp Battle—-Moved June 24th, 2008.
