Mary Sue, Marty Stu

[DeistPaladin]

Don't get me started on why I detest these books, but suffice it to say this is the most blatant example of Mary-Sueing in recent years.

My wife wanted to submit this series and "50 Shades of Gray" as examples of badly written Mary Sue fics that somehow became hits.

[Jenny A]

Nancy Drew of course.

[DeistPaladin]

I don't know why I didn't think of this before but...

Jesus?

EDIT: Oh crap, and here I was trying to create a lighter thread that doesn't touch on politics or religion.

[Tonus]

I don't read comics so others might know better than I do about this. It seems to me that Marvel makes more of an effort to make their characters three dimensional, complete with power limitations, tragic mistakes or personality flaws, the surrounding characters act with their own motivations rather than just fawn all over the protagonist.

That's correct. One of the things that turned Marvel from just another comics company to the most popular publisher in the US was that Lee and Kirby's heroes spent some of their time dealing with the sort of seemingly mundane stuff that ordinary people did. The Fantastic Four bickered amongst themselves, but also nearly got kicked out of their building when the rent was past due(!!!). Tony Stark (Iron-Man) dealt with alcoholism. Peter Parker (Spider-Man) dealt with being a teenager!

Meanwhile, DC's superheroes mostly had to deal with the fact that they were so goddamn awesome all the time.

One of the things that made Alan Moore's Watchmen such a seminal work is that he presents his heroes as regular people, with their good days and bad days, with their flaws and imperfections and their ability to be brilliant one moment and utterly stupid the next. Rorschach winds up defining the modern anti-hero: a bitter and angry loner who insists on seeing his world through a black/white neo-conservative filter, never able to figure out why things have gone so wrong, but determined to fight to the very last. Popular, but not the sort of person people would actually emulate.

[Jenny A]

Don't get me started on why I detest these books, but suffice it to say this is the most blatant example of Mary-Sueing in recent years.

My wife wanted to submit this series and "50 Shades of Gray" as examples of badly written Mary Sue fics that somehow became hits.

Oh, Anastasia Steele is a great example.

[The Grand Nudger]

Johnny "Goodboy" Tyler, Battlefield Earth. 1,100 pages of that shit......goddamnit.

[StealthySkeptic]

I think that all of you definitely have a good point when you say that x hero or y anime character is a Mary or Marty. But what makes someone a Mary or Marty Stu and how do you control this?

In a realistic universe you can more easily identify Stuisms like always getting the girl, always solving the mystery, always being called on in class, etc. You can then compare this to real life or have people compare this for you and see why it's not realistic. In my opinion, some people restrict the definition to when a character is flawless in everything but even being flawless in one aspect is enough for me. Again that can be quickly corrected in something like a romance or historical fiction or really anything set in our world.

But when you have alien planets, faster than light travel, magic, true love's kiss, devourers of worlds, rings of power, British gentlemen in time traveling phone booths, etc. then obviously more suspension of disbelief is required due to the fantastical nature of the world. So people are more accepting of superheroes or other people with extraordinary abilities in a fantasy or sci-fi world. But with great power must come great checks and balances to keep the suspension of disbelief needed to a minimum.

A lot of people for instance criticize Luke Skywalker for being too good with the Force with very little training, piloting an X-Wing, being the person who saves the universe, etc. While I don't think his characterization is the strongest and he certainly tends towards the Stu Side, and the centrality of one person to the original trilogy and the destiny mumbo jumbo are problems with the movies (and with the Hero's Journey metamyth), Luke doesn't do even one thing without somebody helping him.

Besides the obvious teaching from Obi-Wan and Yoda, the Empire would have toasted the Rebellion if C3PO and R2D2 hadn't escaped to Tatooine, Darth Vader would have turned his ass to grass in the trench run if Han Solo hadn't gone back in and saved him, and he just narrowly made it across the gap while holding Leia while stormtroopers fired at him. Sure, you can probably make the case that all of these coincidences were deus ex machinas for Luke, but The Empire Strikes Back is literally nothing but Luke and the Rebellion getting this for Christmas from the Empire.



Compare this to the prequel Jedi, who despite being complete idiots when the plot called for it also basically had God Mode on, making the Separatists laughably bad enemies in the three battles we saw of the legendary "Clone Wars." This makes it painfully obvious that the Jedi were only killed off by clone troopers they could normally have defeated in three seconds because the plot needed that to happen. (Speaking of which, why did no one ever come up with a blaster that could get past a lightsaber?! Those things are freaking unbeatable in the films.)

If Luke had the powers of the prequel Jedi, he would have blown up the Death Star with his mind, defeated Darth Vader in their first and only duel while twirling unnecessarily, and made one of those ridiculous thousand yard leaps to the Emperor's throne and tossed him into Death Star II's reactor himself.

And don't get me started on everything that George Lucas did to Anakin Skywalker in the prequels or I'll be here all day. But I'll just thank him for ruining the best villain of all time.



OK, nearly ruining him.

[The Grand Nudger]

To summarize, a hopelessly decent american human being - only half a step removed from the trees and intriduced to us as an expert thrower of clubs.....through pluck and daring single-handedly annihilates a vast and powerful galactic empire taking only minor breaks to "save" his girlfirned (his only weakness being common human decency). I read that shit honestly rooting for the Psychlos (and truthfully, if it weren't for the really well developed aliens, including the banker species...I couldn;t have stood 100 pages of it).

[DeistPaladin]

I think that all of you definitely have a good point when you say that x hero or y anime character is a Mary or Marty. But what makes someone a Mary or Marty Stu and how do you control this?

An excellent question. Different people will answer differently, since the line can be fuzzy for reasons you articulate. When do you cross the line between "epic story telling" into "someone's day dreams":

Here are some questions I might put on a "Is this character a Mary Sue/Marty Stu" Test:

1. Do the people around the protagonist act with believable motivations or are they cardboard cutouts and sycophants (ala the disciples in the Gospels (oops, there I go again))?

2. Is the protagonist awesomely skilled in a few specific areas of does it seem like he/she can do anything and knows everything, better than even experts in the respective fields? Bonus Mary/Marty points if there's no believable reason such skills should have ever been acquired.

Example: "Will Hunting" might have avoided the Marty Stu label if he was only an intuitive mathematics genius. That he knew everything about everything and better than all the experts is what crosses the line.

3. If the protagonist has super powers/metaphysical abilities/high tech gadgets, are they limited in power and clearly defined or can they do basically whatever the protagonist needs to do at the time?

4. Does the protagonists' love interest (s) have believable motives and a developed character or do they fall in love/lust with the protagonist for no reason? Bonus points if some of these people in love/lust with the protagonist are unnamed or bit parts.

5. Are there other characters of interest or does the protagonist completely dominate the story, as in usually on camera and even when "off camera" he/she is the topic of conversation?

6. Does the protagonist have weaknesses, struggle with anything other than being so awesome, or have any faults (aside from ones that add to his/her appeal such as the 'clumsy' Mary that only is clumsy when falling into the arms of her handsome suitor, or the brooding, edgey Marty) or is the protagonist always cool, perfect and flawless in everything he/she does?

7. Does the protagonist sometimes feel angst about being so awesome and just wants to be "normal"? It doesn't count of not being normal has terrible down sides, like being a vampire.

8. Does the protagonist's story bear strong similarity with the author's biography or nature that bears a strong similarity with the author? Bonus points if the protagonist has the same name as the author.

Feel free to add to this list but the point is there are some important distinctions between "epic" and "oh come on".

[The Grand Nudger]

2. Is the protagonist awesomely skilled in a few specific areas of does it seem like he/she can do anything and knows everything, better than even experts in the respective fields? Bonus Mary/Marty points if there's no believable reason such skills should have ever been acquired.

Continuing my Johnny hate - the Pyschlos, his eventual enemies, jacked him into a "god-machine" that literally beamed any knowledge he required (and most anything that he didn't) - directly into his head, apparently, so he could blow their fucking homeworld up a few hundred pages later. How very accomodating of them.

8.well.........both Johnny and L. Ron were clearly insane...so there's that. The Psychlo/catrist thing is a direct mirror of scientology, obviously.