"Mary Sue"... Hmmmm..... I'm gonna shorten it to MS

That word gets thrown around everywhere, but whenever I see it, I think, "Ahh this commenter does not like the character."

(Rambling ahoy mute if do not want to see)

The Gen 1 MS, the OG from the ST fanzine, was written as a glorified, over-the-top, almost very comical character that's just a bundle of positive character traits that everyone admired.

And there's nothing wrong with that! She's a fanfic chara, people write fanfic for fun

But because her existence made her the center of the canon universe, taking away the spotlight from the other canon characters in the ST universe, it made the story boring. No hardship, no conflict, everything is perfect.

Readers dislike that. So the term MS starts to take a-

-negative tone. Despite the fact that MS is written for the purely for the sake of having fun, the comments and criticism DID land. No one wanted an MS in their story anymore.

Which gave rise to the Gen 2 MS. The Jerk Sue. Villain Sue. And another Sue I cant remember dhdhdbd

Its an attempt to avoid the label MS because "This chara cant be a sue! They're a jerk!" "This chara cant be a sue, they're the villain" etc

There were a bunch of other Gen 2 Sues but basically, it didn't quite work, because the stories the charas are in still served the chara

So, imo, MS is not a bunch of character traits. What makes a chara an Ms depends on how a story or the canon universe they're in writes around them.

If a character already established in the story follows the rules and setting of the universe they're in, they're characters.

But if a character does not follow them, and instead, have the rules *bend* and *flow* to serve and glorify them, they're an MS

Think the infamous My Immortal's Ebony Dark Dementia Ravenway lmao.

In the HPverse, students don't wear Hot Topic, MCR dont exist, and nobody just falls in love suddenly with people.

But that's exactly what happened to Ebony. Suddenly everybody wants to bang her, she's the only cool kid because she's emo who likes MCR and the rest are preps

Another reason why MS are unlikeable is because the story places them as the most important thing in a story, and while this "can* work in a og story, it doesn't work in a fanfic or fan media.

When people go to fanfics, they want to read about charas/worlds they're invested in.

And when the MS, who is usually an og chara, takes center stage, no one wanted to read because aside from the author, no one is invested in MS. They don't know MS, they haven't seen MS' journey, they didn't have time to BE invested in MS unlike the canon charas

So an MS who takes away the attention from charas people are already invested in are....boring, because the MS is not what they came for.

(Of course, there's the possession Sue, that tries to subvert this, but because the story/chara still change/flows, we know its a Sue)

Also I squint a bit at people who readily calls female charas MS, but not male charas who do the exact same thing MS (probably because the OG MS is female, so this is originally a female archetype, so its understandable, but kinda misogynistic, no? We have Gary Stus too!)

TL:DR, codifying the MS with character traits is useless because what makes the MS an MS is how the story treats them.

A protagonist is the center of the story.

An MS is the center of the universe :D