You Wrote What???

Hey Mary Sue !

Definition of a Mary Sue: A fictional character, usually female and especially in fanfic, whose implausible talents and likableness weaken the story.

The most common type of Mary Sue is a character based an the author's idealization of themselves (author's dream-life projecting on to their work). When an author is imagining a preferred version of themselves' faults are often overlooked. The character then becomes boring, unrealistic or both.

The other type of Mary Sue is a character who is basically written to be a perfect match for the main character. The positive traits are emphasised while the negative traits are either ignored or non-evident which prevents a true love triangle or any competition to believably form.

However, a character can have flaws but still be considered a Mary Sue. Say a character has an attitude issue and if she/he never gets called out by any character for being mean to everyone who pops up along side them, they still manged to be a Mary Sue. Or if the character is simply a natural at everything he/she manges to do getting everything they wish for throught out the story.

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The "ideal match" Mary Sue is even harder to work around as a writer because the character herself/himself prevents their own development or ability to add to the plot development. While the "Self-projection" Mary Sue's main challenge is trying to make the character interesting.

Mary Sue's seem to pop up in Fanfics involving popular actors/bands and boyxgirl fanfic stories. Most of authors live their dreams out through their writing, which is great but sometimes we take it too far and forget that flaws make people interesting and relatable.