All right, I’ve been meaning to get this one done for a long, long time, and now I’m going to give it a go. The subject of Mary Sues is an incredibly important one, and I’m going to take as much time as I need to with it.
With that being said, a definition of a Mary Sue is certainly in order – in *roleplay*a Mary Sue is a character without true fault, often used to placate the reader or writer. It should be noted a Mary Sue is not simply an unhealthy character but a truly faultless one. This may seem like it would quickly eliminate most fictional characters from that spectrum, but on closer look that is unfortunately not the case. I should note too that I will bring up the idea of a Mary Sue “element” throughout this post – while a “Mary Sue” is a faultless character, a Mary Sue “element” makes a character Sue-like, but it’s possible to have Sue elements without being a Sue by definition. I would argue that’s a lot harder than it sounds, though.
