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A "Mary Sue" is a character who represents a highly-idealized version of the author (usually). This is the sort of character who, as needed, can perform brain surgery with one hand on a turbulent ...
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#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T02:45:14Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/7359 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
A "Mary Sue" is a character who represents a highly-idealized version of the author (usually). This is the sort of character who, as needed, can perform brain surgery with one hand on a turbulent jet that she's piloting absent-mindedly while working on a cure for cancer -- that sort of thing. [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue) gives the origin as:
> The term "Mary Sue" comes from the name of a character created by Paula Smith in 1973 for her parody story "A Trekkie's Tale"[2]:15 published in her fanzine Menagerie #2.[3] The story starred Lieutenant Mary Sue ("the youngest Lieutenant in the fleet — only fifteen and a half years old"), and satirized unrealistic Star Trek fan fiction.[4]
While this originated with teen females with romantic interests, the article goes on to say, and my friends who write fan fiction confirm, that it's since evolved into exaggerated "super-everything" wish-fulfillment along the lines of my first paragraph. Sometimes super-everything characters who aren't proxies for the author are also called Mary Sues.
According to Lauren Ipsum (see comments), the masculine form is "Marty Stu".
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2013-02-26T19:05:43Z (over 11 years ago)
Original score: 3