The Most Hated Fic Character, Mary Sue

Who the heck is Mary Sue, you ask? The way I understand it, Mary Sue is a generic moniker bestowed on certain, and often stereotypical, original characters inserted into fan fictions. Mary Sues occur across every genre of fiction, and are at their most unbearable when they are a simple matter of the author inserting themselves into the adventure and living vicariously through their character. This style of writing usually leads to the horribly cliched plots, hokey dialogue, and predictable outcomes that doom the fic and mark it to be reviled by followers of the fandom forever. Not exactly the notoriety most authors seek, but surprisingly, many indulge themselves in Mary Suism.
While it can be said that Mary Sue types abound in the original story -- for instance, in many ways Lion-O possesses many Mary Sue qualities -- it's generally regarded as far worse when an author takes an existing universe like ThunderCats, and tosses in their own Mary Sue. Readers are then left with not only the original Mary Sue, Lion-O, to deal with but now they have to contend with an author created character trying to out-Mary Sue *him*!

I must say, I have read some excellently written stories that include a Mary Sue character. Basically, if the author is careful to portray their Mary Sue believably within a well thought out plot, the story is a good read. This page, however, is going to have fun with the "bad" fics that star those indestructable, captivatingly beautiful, Mary Sues.

The Mary Sue Drinking Game:
Have you read some fiction featuring terribly written Mary Sues? Next time you go surfing for ThunderCats fic, get something out of it. Get drunk!

The Cheeze Whiz Chronicles:
As if writing a blantant Mary Sue takes much imagination, I've made the task even *simpler* for you aspiring melodrama queens. Customize your very own Mary Sue character and the adventure in which she stars.

The Mary Sue Litmus Test:
Whether you've already written fics with custom characters or you're simply thinking about doing so, run your characters through this litmus test. It was configured by Al, and the link will take you to the page of his site that houses the test he adapted for the ThunderCats fandom.

Purrsia's First Mary Sue:
It's no suprise -- the main invented character in the major piece of fiction I'm writing is a Mary Sue. I know this because I took Al's test and Felina scored just inside the range of being a Mary Sue. Which, I still don't feel too bad about  as I also have evidence I've grown as a writer. How do I know this? I ran my first ever custom character, who I wrote about when I was 11, through Al's test....and she blew the high end of the scale into Third Earth's atmosphere with nearly a 100 whopping points! If you want to see how bad is bad, follow the link. I actually saved old drawings and stories I came up with in the mid-80s, and scanned a few of them in. I'm not sure whether you'll laugh or cry -- probably both. You have been warned!

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