Suetiful All Along: Difference between revisions

Wrong.

 

 

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.

 

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]].

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* [[Robert A. Heinlein|Heinlein's]] later protagonists <s>show</s> fall headfirst into this, culminating in Lazarus Long. Lazarus calls himself ugly often, but every character he interacts with either wants to be BFFs forever or at least sleep with him on a long-term basis. Their descriptions of him dance around describing him as glowingly as one can without using the word "handsome".

* ''[[Merry Gentry]]'', Laurell K. Hamilton's other major protagonist (see above), looks pretty much like Anita Blake with fewer scars, scarlet hair, [[Kaleidoscope Eyes]], and (probably) even bigger breasts. Growing up surrounded by tall willowy blond elves, and with <s>Hispanic</s> human blood, she also has the ''exact'' same issues with her appearance. Unlike Anita (when Anita isn't being forced to seduce various gorgeous <s>menmales</s> people), Meredith is a politician who uses sex appeal as a tool, and ''has'' on occasion displayed her insecurities to manipulate.

* Mary Brown's fantasy novel ''The Unlikely Ones'' has an interesting and, though [[Your Mileage May Vary]], pretty [[Tropes Are Not Bad|effective variant on this trope]]: The main character has, along with a small group of animals, been cursed and enslaved by an evil witch. She remembers nothing of her life before, suffers from terrible stomach cramps that makes her walk hunched-over, and she is forced to hide her face behind a leather mask whenever she goes out among people. This has led the general population to believe she's a hobgoblin in service of the witch, and so everyone assumes she is hideous. Only her animal friends, whom she's capable of communicating with, are allowed to see her without her mask, but they have no concept of human beauty and can't tell if she is ugly or not. Of course, any reader who has even ''remotely'' paid attention can guess that the girl is stunningly gorgeous behind her mask (and even when she's generally thought of as ugly, she has this way of endearing herself to almost all the non-evil people in the story with her naive innocence) but unlike many of the other women on this page, she does have pretty good reasons for thinking otherwise.

* ''[[Honor Harrington (Literature)|Honor Harrington]]'' is effectively a half-Asian, half-white woman. While real life gives us such lovelies as [[Maggie Q]] and Michaela Conlin, everyone around Honor knows she's attractive, but [[I Am Not Pretty|her own serious self-esteem issues prevent her from seeing it]]. This would not be this trope if not for the fact that the narration says her friend thinks of her as "not pretty, but beautiful". This could be the [[Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic]] prevalent in the series, or it could be Weber trying to have his cake and eat it too.

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* Peter Petrelli from ''[[Heroes (TV)|Heroes]]'' is constantly made to carry the [[Idiot Ball]], since he's so supremely powerful that [[Idiot Plot|if he just acted sensibly]], it would be all but impossible for the writers to create any drama for him. However, no one ever seems to hold his plentiful mistakes against him or suggest that the world might not need quite so much rescuing if Peter could just get his act together for once. The worst he's been accused of (and invariably by a villain - any [[Heel Face Turn]] seems to be automatically followed by a sudden appreciation of Peter's awesomeness) is being ''too self-sacrificing and idealistic''.

** Peter seems to have ditched the [[Idiot Ball]] in later seasons. Well, not so much 'ditched' as 'tossed to his brother', who ran with it.

*** 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.