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{{trope}}
{{quote|''I glanced in the rearview mirror and scrunched my forehead in dismay as I realized for the millionth time that I do not consider myself at all attractive, although roughly 85 percent of the male characters I encounter either fall in love with me or want to kill me, or both, and in the movie version I am portrayed by a total babe.''
|"Fangs of Endearment: A Vampire Novel" by [[Dave Barry]]}}
[[Mary Sue]] is a constant issue for writers. She frustrates the reader with her flawless appearance, outrages them with her inability to do any wrong, and bores them with how perfect everybody seems to think she is. It's a trap that most amateur writers fall into, but surely, just removing all those possibly offensive traits would make her a regular character, right?
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In original fiction it's a character who can get away with almost anything, about whom no one can shut up, or a character who is flawed, sure... but seems to live in a topsy-turvy world where flaws function like virtues and are fetishized accordingly. Above all, it is about wish-fulfillment, and wish-fulfillment comes in many forms. There's nothing wrong with a little or even a lot, but when the wish-fulfillment a character embodies starts to warp the narrative and characterization around it, then you may be looking at a [[Mary Sue]], even if she's in disguise.
In the most blatant cases a writer will try to disguise a character's Sue-ness by claiming that she's "not beautiful" before launching into a description of a goddess just without using the word 'beautiful', or by sprinkling her with physical traits such as thinness or a "wide mouth" that ''have'' been considered imperfections in the past but are rather more fashionable today. In fantasy or sci-fi examples, an author will sometimes invent a culture where some trait the audience is likely to consider attractive or neutral is regarded as horribly ugly, bad luck, etcetera. The most common of these tend to be a certain eye or hair color, or perhaps something like [[Pointy Ears]] indicating partially elven ancestry in a culture [[Fantastic Racism|prejudiced against elves]]. But looks aren't the half of it. It is other qualities - abilities, personality (or lack of) and the way that not just the story, but the WORLD revolves around a character, even though it logically wouldn't - that make a character
Note that a lot of this trope is in the tone. For something like historical fiction, even assuming a third person narrator, we would expect that the story is related by someone familiar with cultural mores of the time. So, let's say we're in a time period where fat people are considered the hawtness, and our lead is a thin person who is attractive by modern standards. Averting this trope would mean defining our lead, not in terms of positive exploration (willowy frame, slender legs, delicate arms), but a more negatively tinted one (stick-like frame, spindly legs, stiff arms). It's all a matter of language.
Before you spot your favorite character on the list and rush to perform a [[Justifying Edit]], consider that in rare cases even full-blown [[Purity Sue]] [[Tropes Are Not Bad|doesn't necessarily mean a ruined character]], and the character who's
Will often appear hand-in-hand with [[Hollywood Homely]] in visual media. Also consider [[Anti-Sue]], a more deliberate attempt to avoid making a character into a [[Mary Sue]].
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== [[Comic Books]] ==
* Wolverine of the [[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]] is constantly described and depicted as physically ugly, has a distinct aversion to bathing, and is shorter than most teenage girls. He's also got a personality so abrasive it's a miracle he ever lasted as part of a team in the first place (he drove founding X-Man Angel off the team and across the country in his second issue). Unfortunately, he speaks 17 languages, his powers make him functionally immortal (he's ''112 years old''
** He ''is'', however, written slightly more realistically within his own series, though this varies from writer to writer as he has become [[Progressively Prettier]] and he's gradually getting taller. It's often considered to be Mark Millar's fault.
** The fact that the makers of the [[The Movie|live-action movies]] chose to disregard the above description and cast Hugh Jackman as Wolverine probably did not help...
** Amusingly averted in ''[[Secret Wars]]''
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** Though casting Vivien Leigh as Scarlett in [[The Movie]] could arguably be a case of [[Adaptational Attractiveness]], too.
* Some characters start out as genuinely plain or flawed characters, but develop into [[Mary Sue]] characters as they age. For example, Frederica Potter in the ''Virgin in the Garden'' tetralogy by A.S Byatt. She starts off as a brainy, skinny, red-haired teenager who's not pretty but attractive as an acquired taste. Lots of people don't like her. Fine. But as the series goes on, she acquires an angsty past, her thinness (and her "wide mouth") become ever more aestheticised and harder to explain as she eats a lot of delicious, sophisticated food, she gets through a never-ending stream of attractive men, she becomes famous without having to lift a finger to work for it. When she's occasionally still described as not being pretty it seems ridiculous when she's just been described, at thirty-something, as looking like ''Alice in Wonderland''. Oddly, lots of people STILL don't like her, for no particular reason but that comes to seem as an obvious marker of specialness as if everyone liked her for no particular reason.
* Actually subverted in [[Atlas Shrugged]], where the author is able to show that Dagny's features (thin, [[She's Got Legs|leggy]], cheekbones) are
* [[Anita Blake]]. According to Laurell K. Hamilton, her Sue is supposedly not attractive because instead of being a tall willowy blonde, she's a short (actually average height) curvy brunette with enormous boobs, collagen lips and a superslim body. Oh, and her * gasps* invisible Hispanicness also obviously detracts from her allure as well. Not to mention the "Is there anyone in the story who isn't completely obsessed with her?" factor.
** Considering how many races can be considered Hispanic (I.E The entire continent of South America), that's incredibly insulting. (Doubtful the author planned to insult them but...)
* [[Christopher Pike]] (the teen horror writer, not [[Star Trek|Kirk's predecessor]] as the captain of the Starship ''Enterprise'') invariably describes his heroines as not being especially attractive. The fact that he then goes on, invariably, to elaborate that this unattractiveness takes the form of having breasts far too large for their waifish frames may [[Author Appeal|raise some suspicions about the integrity of the narrator]].
* The heroine of Frances Hodgson Burnett's ''[[A Little Princess]]'' is convinced that she's unattractive ("I am one of the ugliest children I ever saw") because she doesn't have dimples and [[Hair of Gold|golden curls]]. The narrative voice subverts this trope when it assures us that she is "a slim, supple little creature" with "an intense, attractive little face" and "big, wonderful eyes with long black lashes".
** Though back when it was written, she really wouldn't be have considered pretty. Slimness was less desirable than plumpness, and dark hair was thought of as too common. (Prior to the days of hair dye, blondes were relatively rare.) While Sarah would hardly have been thought as ugly as she believes herself to be, she wouldn't be considered anything remarkable, either.
** The key word in her introductory description is "interesting;" she doesn't believe herself to be pretty, and she isn't, by usual standards. She's not rosy or cheery, she's bony, with plain coloration, and rather quiet and pale. Adults find her a trifle unsettling. However, the narrative points out that she is unaware that there is something else about her that compels people to attend to
* At the beginning of the first ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'' book, Bella Swan goes on at length on how plain-looking, unremarkable, and clumsy she is. The first sign that Sueness is lurking around the corner is her name, which means "beautiful swan". The second sign is her attracting no less than three male admirers at her new school, despite claiming to be a nobody in her former hometown. The rest of the series consists of Bella being in a [[Love Triangle]] with Edward the vampire [[Relationship Sue|whose absolute perfection and beauty are constantly described]] and Jacob the werewolf, and {{spoiler|getting her [[Happily Ever After]] with Edward by becoming a vampire, which coincidentally makes her stunningly beautiful and graceful in the process.}} Note that these are two more boys vying for her love, totaling five altogether. The only flaw remaining for Bella is her boring narrative voice, and that's unfortunately not one that the in-story characters can see. Only that turns out to be what makes her special to
** Let us not fail to mention that the werewolf in question is a six-foot plus boy who looks about eight years older than his seventeen years, with "inky" black hair, rippling muscles, superhuman strength, a posse of nearly equally hawt Quiluete beefcake, a motorcycle and an obsessive need to meet all of Bella's emotional and physical needs. [[Sarcasm Mode|God, her life SUCKS]].
** Inverted, though, with Edward Cullen. The books constantly go on about how good-looking he is, but when actually ''describing'' him, he sounds [[Informed Attractiveness|fairly plain, or even a bit below average]].
** Bella's first description of herself in Chapter 1 of the first book is an example of this. Bella does her best to give the impression that she's ordinary in
* Rhapsody from the ''Symphony of Ages'' series. Despite being magically transformed into the embodiment of [[Hello, Nurse!]], she constantly puts herself down (especially when feeling [[Wangst
** Part of this is that at first, after her transformation, people are stunned upon seeing her, and she thinks it's because she is astonishingly ugly, not astonishingly beautiful.
** Achmed arguably inverts this trope, as well. He has a long list of traits that traditionally would make him a Sue type character (half breed, unstoppable assassin, succeeds at anything he does, strong willed enough to resist a full blown demon, etc). It's inverted because despite all of his skills and all the important things he does in the plot (like forming one of the most powerful kingdoms in the world), the plot places almost no emphasis on him unless what he is doing directly involves Rhapsody. He has almost everything needed to become a Sue, yet the narrative just doesn't seem to find him interesting enough to focus on.
*** You've hit upon part of the reason why Rhapsody is such a Mary
* Robert Langdon from ''[[The Da Vinci Code|Angels and Demons]]'' is described this way at the opening of one of the books. "He was not classically handsome" followed shortly by "tall", "dark hair", "piercing eyes", "voice was like chocolate for the ears" and "swims thirty laps of the pool every day". {{spoiler|And he gets the stunningly hot love interest at the end of it.}}
** If you read through his other books, a lot of Dan Brown's leading men seem to share this trait.
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** The real kicker is not the fact that she thinks she's ugly, which is because of the beauty standards she was raised in, but the fact that she manages to invent the first white hide, the wheel and many medicinal practices all by herself and gets guys fawning over her left and right.
*** Actually, she didn't invent the white hide, she learned that from an old woman/side character. She did of course, domesticated the first dog, cat and horse in... a yearish? So yeah, still very Sue.
*** She can also learn languages in under a day and her only enemies are people considered [[
* In "Being of the Field" by Traci Harding, the author mentions repeatedly that the main character Taren is supposed to be shunned by society as a loony madwoman. But from the first moment the story begins, praise is lavished on her nonstop by every other character in the book, everyone comes to her for advice, and everyone clamours to be her friend and/or romantic partner. A shocking case of Sue.
** This is only cause the other main characters are also seen as a bunch of weirdos be the rest of society, too.
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*** He uses the limited version of his power to good effect, which is a lot more fun to watch than when he always had the ability to resolve any situation in five seconds flat, but was too much of an idiot to do so. In addition, as of Volume Five, we actually get to ''see'' him being self-sacrificing and idealistic (even to such a downright self-destructive extent that it might be considered a genuine character flaw) instead of just hearing about it all the time. In fact, the Peter of later seasons has had so much [[Character Development]] that he can be said to have finally escaped this trope, despite starting out as the poster boy for it.
* [[Jessica Alba|Max]] of ''[[Dark Angel]]'' is not only the only one of the [[Super Soldier|transgenics]] to have had a mother who loved her, the one [[Colonel Badass|Lydecker]] [[Squick|based off of his dead wife]]... Was anyone surprised in the second season when it turned out she was the [[Chosen One]] destined to save humanity?
* Chuck from ''[[Pushing Daisies]]'' is definitely this. The
* Prue from ''[[Charmed]]'' fits this trope to a T. She often made a ton of rash decisions and often
** The same episode also had Prue get a stalker. Prue insisted her life wasn't perfect and wondered why the stalker would want to be her. Riiiight, except she's got a high paying job, is excellent at photography, is somehow able to wear as little as possible to work at an auction house, has men practically begging for a glance from her and oh yeah, is a
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Wish Fulfillment]]
[[Category:The Beautiful Tropes]]
[[Category:Just for Pun]]
[[Category:YMMV Trope]]
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