[OOC: Much of the information collected here comes from the wonderful people at The Mary Sue Report. Contributions from LOTR and Harry Potter in particular come heavily from LOTR Sue of the Day, Potter Sue of the Day, and Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings Sues. As well, there is a very nice list of Mary Sues at Mhari’s Mary Sue Classification, courtesy of Sueologist Mhari.
Guide to the Sue in the Field: First Edition
Introduction
This is a guide to identifying the Mary Sue in both fanfiction and original fiction, and classifying her when you’ve found her. It is intended primarily for people who know what a Mary Sue is, or at least have a good idea. If you are unsure what a Mary Sue is, well- be aware that there are many and sometimes contradictory definitions. Among them:
-A Mary Sue is an author’s self-insert, a perfected version of the author who saves the world and makes everyone fall in love with her.
-A Mary Sue is the one who manages to find the exception to every rule of canon, and twist it to her advantage.
-A Mary Sue is the female character added for no reason to the canon of a game/book/movie/television show, or even to the center of an original fiction work. She’s the heroine we’re supposed to cheer for, but many readers detest her and find it impossible to sympathize with her.
-A Mary Sue is the Miss Sucky who vacuums the life out of every other character and turns them into posturing shadows, servants of her own beauty and saintliness. Even when she has a bitchy temper, most people love her, and the few who don’t are portrayed as shallow and evil. She will almost always have elaborate descriptions of her beauty that appear within the first chapter where she’s introduced, and a dark, mysterious past. She is more dramatic than anyone else in the story, and we’re supposed to feel that.
A list of more "official" definitions of the Sue will eventually be found in the Appendix to this work.
This Guide is organized according to the following pattern:
Section I: The Classes of Sues. This section will trace the greatest classes of general Sues, and their subspecies. In cases where a Sue has a legitimate reason to appear in more than one classification, one chapter will contain detailed information, and the other will include a link to the relevant section, as well as a short explanation of why the Sue is in the other chapter. For example, a Sue who is a unicorn might be a Puella shattercanonica in the Tolkien canon, because no unicorns exist there, but she is listed under “Other-Species Sues” because her species takes precedence over her specific role in one canon. Each chapter includes general identifying marks of the Sue and examples of actual fics or books in which the Sue appears, as collected and critiqued by experienced Sueologists.
Section II: Canon-Specific Sues. This section will be focused on canon-specific Sues, breeds that appear with marked characteristics and great frequency in fanfiction for one particular work. It also includes a special section on Sueish characters in original fantasy, the genre I love, obsessively read and write in, and know most about. Alas, it happens to be the one of the genres, with the exception of romance, in which characters are the most prone to being too dramatic and overblown. Again, the chapters include examples of actual fics. This section will rely heavily on other Sueologists’ contributions for those canons with which I am not personally familiar.
Section III: Miscellany. This will eventually contain information of interest to Sueologists that does not seem to have a place in the other chapters. There are sections on methods of eliminating Sues, instructions on giving concrit, reader-submitted litmus tests, and chapters on Gary Stus/Mary Stus and Original Female Characters who manage to escape the Mary Sue trap. It also has a list of amusing Sue names.
Appendix. This is mostly a section of links, to definitions of Mary Sues and litmus tests among others.
Want to help?. I would really appreciate it!
-If you’re interested in being linked, send me an e-mail (at anadrel@hotmail.com) with your web handle and URL. I’ll peruse it before linking, but I will usually accept any link, unless it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Mary Sues or fanfiction at all.
-If you’re interested in contributing a Mary Sue species, canon-specific or not, these are the steps:
Look over the list of Sues first, to make sure that you aren’t submitting a breed that someone’s already submitted. If your proposed new breed has similar characteristics to another, but you think there are enough differences to warrant inclusion, then explain in your e-mail why yours is different. Or perhaps your Sue will fit under a more general Sue classification. Let me know if you’re interested in seeing your example go into one of the more general chapters.
Send me an e-mail at anadrel@hotmail.com with the characteristics of the Sue breed, in the outline (or at least a rough approximation of it) used in these chapters.
Please put something identifying your e-mail as an e-mail about Mary Sues in the subject line, for example: “New LOTR Mary Sue,” “Sue Classification System,” and so on. I tend to delete e-mail from people I don’t know.
Please include examples of the species you’re identifying. You should have at least one example for a canon-specific Sue, and at least two for a more general Sue breed. If the fic is still on the Internet, include the URL, title, author’s name, and fandom. If the fic has been removed, please include an example of it in the e-mail itself, preferably more than just a few sentences.
If this is a canon-specific Sue, include a short explanation of what makes the Sue so outrageous in the fandom. Does she put one of the main characters wildly OOC? Does she interfere with very basic canon ideas or plotlines? The reason I ask is that unless I’m familiar with the fandom you’re targeting, I may not see anything particularly outrageous in the description, even though it may be enough to make someone familiar with the fandom scream as if her hair’s on fire.
Finally, let me know how you’d like to be identified! If you’d prefer not to give out your common webname, so as not to get flames, then pick another one; I want people to have credit, so I don’t want to have too many “Anonymous” contributions. Also let me know if you want me to give your e-mail address, URL, or anything else that will identify you. You may also want to pick a “Sueologist classification”:
Sue Identifier . Reads fics with Sues in, studies them, reports on and classifies them. Rarely if ever reviews a Sue fic.
Field Sueologist . Actively seeks to review- constructively, not flaming, though the Sue authors may mistake them for flames- Sue fics and give the authors advice to make them better.
Battle Sueologist . Those who have received flames in return for review efforts. If you would like to include examples of the Sue flames and/or how you responded, then you are free to do so.
Healer Sueologist . Those who beta for Sue authors and/or enter intensive efforts with them to improve their fics.
(None of these ‘titles’ is mandatory, but if you feel you fit one of the classifications and you’d like the world to know it, feel free to claim it).