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There are subjectives, and then there are these. While you may believe a work fits here, and you might be right, people tend to have rather vocal, differing opinions about this subject.
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Anti-Sue

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"If a fanfic writer really does want to avoid writing a Mary Sue, then they should just do the opposite and make a horrible character who is ugly, ineffectual, flawed beyond the point of being able to function in any capacity, and yet still inexplicably the center of the universe. That'll put those Mary Sue accusers in their place, and you'll be riding high, right over the point they were trying to make. Showed them."
Terrible Writing Advice, "Fanfiction Original Characters"

If a Mary Sue is "perfect", then the easiest way to avoid making one is to do the opposite, right? Well, the Anti-Sue shows up when an aspiring writer takes the opposite of "perfect" as "perfectly opposite" instead of "imperfect". A Mary Sue is a Friend to All Living Things who is So Beautiful, It's A Curse and can solve any problem in five minutes or less? Then an Anti-Sue will be The Grotesque and an Enemy to All Living Things who never does anything right. And so on.

Unfortunately, simply inverting the Common Mary Sue Traits does not prevent a character from being a Mary Sue. When other characters still worship them and the plot still bends over backwards to facilitate them they're still a Mary Sue, despite now being described as an unspeakably ugly and incredibly pathetic loser. This can actually be even more annoying than a vanilla Mary Sue — at least it makes some sort of sense for characters to worship a beautiful, friendly, hypercompetent Mary Sue, but when they're physically ugly with an unpleasant personality and can barely tie their own shoes (much less solve other people's problems) and everyone still treats them like the greatest thing since sliced bread, Willing Suspension of Disbelief gets smashed into tiny little pieces. (And yet, this is sometimes Oscar Bait for movies about the Inspirationally Disadvantaged.)

Of course, there is an opposite effect. Rather than admiration, some Anti-Sues instead have their peers' intense hatred and dislike of them be what overrides any other plot in the story — that is, they'll drop everything they're doing just to make the Anti-Sue's life that much more miserable and keep them around solely for that purpose, as if they were a walking Jerkass Ball.

Contrast Jerk Sue. Not to be confused with "Auntie Sue".

Do not confuse with Butt-Monkey, The Chew Toy, or Failure Hero, whose main (but not sole) trait is that they fail at everything. Do not also confuse with Designated Monkey, who is picked on regardless of character traits and does not have to be the center of attention. Nor confuse it with Villain Sue.


Please do not add examples to work pages, this merely defines the term.

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