The Weird World Of Mary Sues
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Today let’s take a look at the infamous Mary Sue trope- flawless, beautiful, overpowered and all around perfect, these magic sparkly rainbow neko kitsune princess overlords were the bane of every writer and artist’s existence in the 2000’s and 2010’s. But why? Why did Mary Sues come into existence, why were they met with such hatred and vitriol, and why is there still so much drama surrounding them? Well, let’s take a deep dive into the trope, it’s history, and it’s impact on the internet!
❤︎❤︎ SOCIAL MEDIA ❤︎❤︎
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❤︎❤︎ MUSIC ❤︎❤︎
Petz Catz 2 OST
Cheel / Sunday Rain
LuKrembo / Bored
Vylet Pony / Antonymph [https://www.youtube.com/c/VyletPony/featured]
Under Earth / Speed Devil [Provided By Epidemic Sound]
Divorce Applause / Leave It [Provided By Epidemic Sound]
Jerry Lacey / A Feast For A King [Provided By Epidemic Sound]
Bonnie Grace / Scintillations [Provided By Epidemic Sound]
ELFL / Memory Drive [Provided By Epidemic Sound]
Sarah, The Instrumentalist / Rio De Janeiro [Provided By Epidemic Sound]
❤︎❤︎ TIMESTAMPS ❤︎❤︎
0:00 – Introduction
3:30 – A Mary Sue History Lesson
9:19 – Mary Sue Examples
23:27 – Pop Culture Mary Sues
28:41 – Mary Sues And Internet Culture
36:10 – Mary Sues In The Modern Day
❤︎❤︎ DISCLAIMER ❤︎❤︎
All credit goes to the musicians and composers! This video is not meant to target or harass any person. This video does not condone or encourage anyone to harass or contact any person or persons discussed in this video. This video is purely for entertainment and informational purposes.
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Yo 🔥https://youtu.be/rdJ9bsN7JAw…
Topic suggestion: what is hatsune miku and what is the story behind these vocaloids??
@Epic lockley sue
could you do a video about sparkle dogs please???
I adore most Mary Sue designs tbh they’re such a look
I feel like they’ve aged charmingly
Especially sparkledogs; there was so much creativity that like went into those designs, and even if it ended up looking terrible i live for them
Fr
The internet finally starting to move beyond postmodern irony and into meta-modern self-sincerity is the thing I am most proud of the younger generations for managing to pull off. As much as I personally enjoyed the cowboy days of snark on the internet, it was a terrible place to be if you wanted to actually express yourself in any genuine way.
@Canisovis How so? Sometimes you want a realistic and relatable character, sometimes you want to see a neon abomination shoot rainbow lasers. They’re for different situations.
The “I’m not like other girls” 2010’s era truly brought out the WORST in all of us 💔
I was part of the early 2000s set.
This makes me want to write a character who’s essence is “I’m not like other girls I’m __worse__”
Oof, indeed…though we had a version in the early 2000’s, too. I’m embarrassed by my former Emo self, but at least it wasn’t full-blown lol.
i agree that mary sue ocs are pretty much just harmless fun and a form of escapism for kids, and if it makes them happy, good for them. But I gotta admit, once they’re brought into a setting where people other than the creator has to deal with them, they can get really irritating. I’ve dealt with mary sue dnd characters, rp characters, and mary sues in collaborative writing projects and those sorts of characters are flat-out insufferable to work with when they aren’t actually your own character because they ruin the fun for everyone else by breaking the continuity of the world, immediately resolving every conflict, and just taking all the moments in the spotlight from other players/characters. To be fair though that’s kind of a completely separate problem
Once had someone’s Drama Sue borrow one of my dudes to help her character give birth and it was like, WTF no.
Mary Sou DnD types are so frustrating… A watched a whole dnd group dissolve after a boss fight when the Mary Sou player had a screaming match with the DM.
Yeah, I remember trying out some fiction role playing in a forum online (around 2007 before social media took over the function of forums) when I was in my early teens and one girl had a Mary Sue character that immediately resolved every single conflict I tried to introduce. Every other participant in the forum got bored of it and quit, and I’m still annoyed at this random 12 year old girl to this day…
Also, when the Mary Sue OC moves from some DA roleplay account to a professionally published/broadcasted work 💀 somehow it’s even worse if they’re _not_ the main character and instead some side character who shows up halfway through the series to throw a wrench into everything.
One of the main things I learned while getting my B.A. in Theater was to always go over the top, push your acting choices to their limit. Why? Simply put its far easier to reign it in & hone in on the characterization you want than it is to try to keep building little by little on rudimentary blasé acting. So I’ve chosen applied that to OCs (mine included). I think its totally okay and a valid means of character creation to have your characters start out as Mary-Sues/Gary-Stus/ [Insert Enby version here] because you can whittle away the things that you realize aren’t a perfect fit for what you want your character to be, also because that’s literally how I work on mine. Plus it sounds better than the other option which is having to start from a blank slate. Added to that is the truth that a lot of Mary Sues people created, they created them when they were kids. Well many of them have continuously been working on them since then and now have amazing well-rounded character. All in all, I love Mary Sues the same way I love fanfiction, both are practice/exercises in making great content and I’m never going to put down anything that helps artists and writers, especially young artist and writers grow and become better at their craft.
I find Mary Sues so sweet, we all just want to be loved or be the hero of our stories when we were little. I also love seeing people keep their OC’s around and help them grow dynamically, it’s so fascinating.
@ayior Carrie (seen both guys and girls named it) Or Terry
and Ionno. Slews, spews, snooze.
Damn now I’m trying to think of an Enby version
It’d either be Unisex names or non-name names, in my experience (being one and knowing more)
But the best i can come up with is Wary-Glue lol
Anti-Mary Sue culture has had a much bigger impact on my artistic progress than I thought until you actually talked about it. I used to be really ashamed as a young teen for making powerful “self insert” type characters because I thought everyone would find them cringe. I’m really into character creation and design and even now as an adult I have to think twice about adding colourful hair or interesting eye features or edgy accessories to characters (even when it makes sense for setting and/or character type or is normal in the inspiring established media) for fear that I’ll be making a Mary Sue. It used to cause me a lot of art block because I was scared to put down my genuine ideas on paper. Thankfully now I’m starting to get over it, and it feels good that more people aren’t so harsh on what is “good” character writing or design. So thank you Izzy!
I vividly remember being in the my little pony fandom on good ol deviantart back when it was popular and there was this 14 year old girl who had a “mary sue” mlp oc and she got so much backlash for it she kept redesigning her oc to make her less of a mary sue but people were never satisfied. i think she ended up putting her up as an adoptable and the person who got it said they were gonna redesign her completely. kinda messed up looking back on it.
aw poor baby!
That’s so sad
@dirt child mcgee I’ve seen one OC fixing video that was just in jest because like, people would submit OCs to see the CC do something with them.
that’s so messed up jfc
i never liked the whole “OC review/fixing” thing precisely because of stuff like this. every OC has a lot of love put into them from their creator and seeing people just relentlessly mock and try to “fix” someone else’s harmless creation is upsetting
@Spoopy Virgil That is just true fam
I was in the very heart of a lot of the MLP alicorn/”mary-sue” movement and I 100% remember reading your entire splurge on how not to make an MLP OC. It was giving me whiplash seeing a ton of old MLP OCs I have come across and even some familiar usernames of people I’ve interacted with personally. I don’t know if you were around when the closed species MLP OCs got really really popular (Plant Ponies, Cowplant Ponies etc) but I was apart of and the original co-owner of this species called Faceless Ponies that are still around and kinda having it’s own little revival.
Its honestly so fun to see these types of videos because the deviantart fandom communities are something I’ve been deep in since the early 2000s
I had an alicorn OC once (well I had a couple… one was my sona and she didn’t even have a backstory really so I don’t really feel she counts as a character) and I remember one person in particular going NUTS on this character because HOW DARE I make an alicorn OC that’s born an alicorn and was just the best!!
…despite the fact the character in question was not in fact born an alicorn… and he was a piece of shit. Him being an alicorn was vital to his story, he was kind of an AU Celestia who was also an asshole and ended up getting killed by his own people in a rebellion.
Oh and the person who yelled at me for having an alicorn OC? First of their DA name was something like “Lunafan” aaaaaaand they had alicorn OCs…including babies…
And then the troll blocked ME for pointing this out which I thought was kinda hilarious.
ur like the most og fan of hers then/
Oh my goddd I grew up on deviant art making mlp adoptables and making a bunch of mlp species myself at the time, mostly just open ones for fun, i remember the mlp species so well I’m so glad I wasn’t the only kid on DA just obsessed with those weird little DA communities like that 😀
Having had the cringes for Mary-Sue characters as a teen, I can now say that they aren’t terrible at all! Looking at it from a 30+ teachers perspective, they are great for kids to express themselves. A lot of kids do not feel important or like they have power at all, their Mary-Sues give them that feeling and that first look into what it could be like if you were the best at something (or everything, haha). It can be a coping mechanism or just expression of creativity, which seems puzzling given many of them have the same traits, but art welcomes learning from other people.
Personally, I now feel terrible looking back at all the Mary-Sue hate and the guides telling you who your character can or can’t be. It’s like people were mad when somebody was trying to be special and to stand out, subconsciously they were trying to make characters fit this mold of being less extraordinary, more regular. I can see how this could really impact a childs or teens psyche, as they put themselves into their Mary-Sues. Kids are not trying to create a well-balanced character that needs to pass the “are they believable” check.
Great video in dissecting the subject, this was quite nostalgic!
@OseiBayard3h omg same! I deliberately tried to tone down most of my Fandom OCs and while some were related to MCs I tried, even when I was 12, to not Write a Mary Sue.
Though I eventually compiled all of my OCs into a self insert that was Literally Me that was chosen to jump between worlds (the fandom properties I loved) and take on different forms (my characters) in each world so…. I think I eventually got there 😂
I keep reading about everyone’s Mary Sou’s and I really wish younger me would have went more ham on the whole trope. It seems like it was so fun and would have maybe helped little me’s confidence. Maybe. I don’t know but gosh these are all so amazing.
Back when I started writing in 5th grade all of my female main characters were so overpowered! None of these characters have flaws that I can remember either.
Amy – Pretty, smart, kind (wow what a complex character)
Violet – Looked like me, funny, first aid expert, could fight really well, observant to an insane degree (like she could hear something 10 minutes before everyone else idk)
Faye – Again looked like me, could randomly fight with a cool sword she found in a pond after aliens took over, somehow knew which plants were poisonous and which weren’t, stupidly good survival skills
OMG I did this but there was a hot minute in third grade when a few girls actually took interest in my little writing and comics and they wanted to be in them. SO like a fool, I added THEM because I thought they were fine as they were but they ended up Mary Sou’ing themselves and it was hilarious. They didn’t last long.
Examples of their requests:
One girl could eat whatever she wanted without ever getting fat.
One girl said her smile made people fall in love with her.
Another said she was able to run and never get tired.
I was like, Guys there’s not enough room in this notebook page for all this and it doesn’t make any sense with the story about ninjas…