One thing I hate about guys that complain about Mary sues is that they never complain about “Gary Stus.” For example, Light Yagami was kind of a Gary Stu. He had an IQ of 215–230, he was handsome, the most popular kid in his school, and his family was upper middle class. Jace Wayland from Shadowhunters is an arrogant, brooding bad boy who’s a master martial artist, who women fawn over, and is basically the fantasy of what men and women think a cool bad boy is. Tony Stark is a multi-billionaire with multiple armored, superpowered suits that basically make him Superman, and Superman himself is basically a god.
Are these characters bad? No. I love all of them, but let’s be real here… they could be considered male Mary Sues, and these guys never bring that up.
Now, not every character or show has to be relatable. Peter Parker works because he’s an everyman; however, the opposite can also be true, and people like fantasy escapism. That’s why soap operas about wealthy people or sitcoms about financially stable families are popular, because it’s a form of escapism this goes for Mary Sues and Gary Stus too.
Kvothe from the King Killer Chronicles comes to mind.
But I’ve always just called him a Mary Sue as it gets the point across.
There are more Mary Sues than Gary Stus in fiction because women aren’t written as people I’m a lot of media, so they aren’t allowed to have the realistic flaws that keep them from being Mary Sues.
Light is a power fantasy, but I wouldn’t call him a Stu because he’s a megalomaniac and has an actual personality. He also fails at the end.
Stark has his own personality issues, but some of the TV shows fail to highlight those so he does come off as a Stu.
The biggest Mary Sue and Fary Stu genres are romance where you’re supposed to self insert, so the MC has to be very plain and boring and just like the reader or viewer. Romance novels for women and harem anime for men.
Tony Stark is also a barely functioning alcoholic, and a lot of people complained that the MCU skipped over that.
Others have good answers, but I wanted to add something that’s overlapping with this topic, especially since you mentioned anime.
I’ve watched quite a bit of anime since college when my friends got me into it. Recently I’ve been showing some anime to my mom based on things I like and which I think she would like. She commented that she thinks anime seems to have a lot of women in it.
To some extent this is skewed by my selection of shows for her, but it got me thinking. At least from my own personal experience, there do seem to be a lot more women in anime than you see in western media. There are many shows with female protagonists or all female cast and even the ones with a male protagonist frequently feature a prominent supporting cast of women.
While they do tend to get over-sexualized, there are plenty of shows where that isn’t the case and even when they do get objectified, there are a lot of them in strong or at least traditionally non-feminine roles. This is a medium where magical girls, battle maids, lady knights, female professionals and leaders are fairly well worn tropes. There are also definitely a lot of them that could be described as Mary Sues because they are just super powerful/competent at whatever they do.
At least from what I have personally observed, I haven’t seen nearly as much misogynist complaining about the prominence of women in these roles. But maybe that’s just the discussion sites that I visit. I also haven’t really done any kind of rigorous counting of shows with predominantly female casts, but they do seem to make up A LOT of the shows I have watched and enjoyed. So maybe this observation is just the result of a bias in my own viewing habits.
idk. I’d be curious to see what others have observed and thought about this. Maybe I’m way off base.
I don’t think Mary Sue or Gary Stu characters are intrinsically bad. Provided that the work is honest about it.
I prefer characters who have realistic strengths and weaknesses, and who face credible tests in the plot, which they aren’t guaranteed to pass. I like characters who fail from time to time.
I do sometimes want some escapism and such, so I’m glad Mary Sue and Gary Stu types still exist.
I love how Isaac Asimov is an actual side character in “Murder at the A.B.A.” (written by Asimov himself). And his self-insert is written as a condescending douche that the protagonist can’t stand.
Who?
Because the kind of people who complain about Mary Sues are usually just misogynists
Or they just don’t like shallow overpowered characters.
You are aware that Mary Sues also rever to male characters right?
