Rant: Mary Sue

At first these rants were like a stress reliever because I like to not yell at people in real life, but it's actually gotten to the point where it is a bit exhausting being so angry. But I persist because I'm not  a quitter. Also, it starts discussions and those are good, for the most part.

Let's get into it, so this week I will be talking about why I hate the Mary Sue character trope. If you are new to this reading and writing thing and don't know what a Mary Sue is, then I shall explain. A Mary Sue is a flawless female protagonist. They never do anything wrong and have no problematic character traits.

These characters are "relatable" while not actually being relatable at all. There is all this justification that you can get behind, because most of us would like to be able to believe that we are always in the right and that we're perfect. This is never the case in real life, we all have problematic traits or do things that are wrong.

These characters are usually what the author wishes they were. Basically they want to create the perfect character because they have some undeniable desire to be perfect. Now, maybe some authors don't actually mean to reflect any of this into their characters, maybe they are really problematic themselves and they want to create a character who has none of those issues, maybe they have gotten into the habit of writing characters who are perfect and don't even realize that they're doing it. Either way, I would suggest working on that.

The very idea of a Mary Sue is pushing girls to believe that they have to be perfect to amount to anything in life, they have to be the prettiest girl to get the guy, they have to have perfect grades and perfect social life but most of the time they don't realize how "perfect" they are which makes them seem like they deserve all this good stuff more than anyone else. The real kicker being that they have no flaws which makes people envy the shit out of them and sad that they can't be as perfect as those characters. I just don't think the idea of a Mary Sue is healthy.

Also, when reading about a "perfect" character, it starts to get annoying because despite how "relatable" they are, they stop being relatable after a certain point because they don't have flaws like the rest of us do. Maybe the characters even critic some of these flaws that us human beings do have in their quest to prove how perfect they are.

Anyway, thoughts on the Mary Sue?

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