That darn Mary-Sue

This particular topic can work for any type of character creation fancition and original. And that is turning your own character, or alter the behaviors of an existing character, to cause their characterizations to become unbeleivable in the sense of their strengths compared to their weaknesses.

This is dubbed as a Mary-Sue/Gary-Stu.
This happens from the indirect act of favortism.


For example say my character that was created for this blog, Lie, suffered from the Mary-Sue syndrome. Let's say she's a perfectly strong, always lucky, never lost a fight, athletic, super smart, telekenitic, super flexible femme fetale with a genius complex. AND she was multilingual with ultra advanced super powers.









Her weakness? She... hates... the... color... blue.

It actually pains me a bit to even joke about doing that to her, but this so you get the idea.


As for an already existing character that can fall into that category easily when writing, is Shadow the Hedgehog. His character is basically immortal/immune/indistructable. He also has a tragic past. Yet, the conflict is he's rather emotional in a sense. But because of his power, and dub of being the Ultimate Lifeform, it's easy to add on elements that make him even more "perfect" and versatile in so many ways, using a plethora of skills that the list could go on forever.






Another existing character example would be Yami Yugi.


You KNOW he's the main character. He hardly ever loses a duel, and when he, by some slim chance and for sake of plot he's about to lose, he pulls a miraculous "I'm-the'main-character-so-I'm-going-to-use-a-card-or-cards-that-ensues-that-I-win-even-if-I've-never-used-them-before-in-a-deck-of-mine-just-for-this-episode-and-occasion!" deal at the last minute (AKA, blatantly cheating), and wins by default.


Well, the show is named after him anyway, so it's like a sure-fire giveaway.




A real life Mary-Sue would be me, in a lot of cases. I could list a lot of positives, yet my main flaw is I tend to focus on the negatives of a situation. Even you may have qualities that tend to be labeled as a flat out Mary-Sue. That doesn't make you a bad fanfic character by any means lol
I'll give a quick example of some Mary-sueness of mine that has frequently occurred. There were quite a few times when me, my fiancee, and our friends would play poker and everytime, for at least 2 weeks straight, when I was about to run out of chips, the flop and river would always match in my favor every hand I played.
Needless to say, I got a large stack back to stay in the game. (But I ultimately ended up losing to my fiancee anyway lol)
The point is, every person, or character, may encounter bouts of extreme luck or seem to have more strengths than weaknesses at different points during their existence, but its how their situations are handled that makes the difference. And avoiding overloading your character with too much unnecessary strengths they don't need.

The way to avoid over-stacking a character's traits in unbelievable favor is to take a look at your own weaknesses.


How many of them contrast with your strengths?
Think of others' faults and weaknesses. What makes a person more accepted and worthwhile to be around because of their weaknesses in contrast to their strengths?
What makes them and their personality genuine? What are their hopes, dreams, and fears? Do any of them fit with your character's build?

Let's use Lie in another example. While her hair and eye color are unnatural and her ears are pointed, does that automatically make her an unhuman figment?

Just another Mary-Sue concept because of her bizzarity?

Perhaps she is classified as a human, but dreams of being more than that. Maybe her dream was to be a supernatural being and she did what she could to at least look the part to herself. So she could have dyed her hair two different colors and ended up with a purplish mixture by accident. She could be wearing contact lenses for her eyes, or false pointed add-ons on her ears to make them look elf-like.
Maybe she has a great, cushy life but it's not enough for her; she wants more, to be more, to know more.
Maybe Lie, indirectly, is visually dishonest to those that observe her in order to be absolutely true to herself?

How does one know of a character's hopes and dreams? Find out next tiiime!

And as for the concept of Mary-Sues, allow as many weaknesses as there are strengths, but make them believable. That's my opinion.

Make your characters/character renditions BELIEVABLE.


Even for Shadow, if you had him in a scenario where he was holding a giant 500 ton boulder over his head, shooting laser beams from his eyes, his body radiating with an indestructible barrier, causing the whole planet to tremble, AND all the while being gentle to the flower on the ground blooming next to his feet, I think that's a bit too overboard. Even for him.

Catch you next time.

Mel Meiko Mei Ling