The Campaign Against Real Sues
The Fanfiction world is now haunted by tedious writers with overpreppy names who mass-produce fics with already clichéd plots, bad punctuation, and horribly perfect OC characters, called Mary Sues. The Campaign Against Real Sues hopes to change all this by alerting disturbed readers to this new and unavoidable phenomenon.
The Campaign Against Real Sues is, simply put, against Mary Sues.
Okay. How can I tell if an OC's a Mary Sue or not?
Very easily. The authors themselves have done the job for us. Almost all Real Sues are instantly identifiable. A character that has "curves in all the right places" is a Real Sue. A character that has more than one eye color is a Real Sue. Any character that has a ridiculously fantasyish name that no sensible or caring parent would give to their child is a Real Sue…i.e. Eliwyn, Xena, Mae, Chalondra, Thorn, etc, etc.
Almost every character that is thin, tall, curvy, tanned, pretty, sexy, foreign, cute, hot, exotic, stunning, dimpled, and seductive all at once is a Real Sue.
Beautiful OCs are not necessarily Sues, but if they persist in acting in such a bitchy, arrogant, slutty, two-dimensional way that it would put a freelance stripper to shame they are most definitely putting their untarnished OC status into question.
Oh. So all beautiful OCs are Real Sues?
Well, no.
Actually, there is a neat trick that can tell you if an OC is a Mary Sue.
Think of this beautiful character, called…Lucy, for instance, put into a roomful of drooling, sex-hungry male beasts. Would Lucy:
a) act shy, confused, and eagerly get out of the room as soon as possible
or
b) immediately start having a mad, passionate group orgy with the hottest of the sexy beasts with bad metaphors and please-stick-nails-into-my-eyes detail?
If the answer is B, then the said Lucy is unfortunately a Real Sue.
Real Sues NEVER wear anything half-decent.
…OR kiss less than one person in five days.
…OR spend less than two hours deciding what to wear to class in the morning.
Real Sues don't wear normal underwear. But they often wear men's boxers, usually in the morning, post-coitus, when they have a sudden modesty attack and decide that lying on the bed naked is going to cause major problems with some ex-lover that might come in the room at sudden notice…and wouldn't you know it, they DO!
Real Sues are not totally heartless creatures. Once in a while, the author attempts to resurrect their character's personality by inserting something like this scene:
The Sue is walking with her homegirl friends when they see some bully beating up a poor kid, and immediately rush over to stop the situation, while the Sue's totally useless and equally bitchy Sue friends crowd around her, call her the next Mother Teresa, and praise her for her wonderful bleeding heart.
Quite ironically the Sue in question often has insulted a fellow character in the previous paragraph for several different reasons:
Not having perfect skin…unlike the Sue.
Not having the perfect wardrobe…unlike the Sue.
Not having oodles of brain-dead boys salivating over her…yet again, unlike the Sue.
Once I came across a fic that had this horrible, bitchy character called Byrony. Here are several sentences from it…
''Hi, my name's Cho,'' said one of the girls. She was kind of pretty, but Bryony thought she looked sort of depressed.
''You know,'' Bryony said. ''You'd look a lot better if you smiled more.'' Cho sort of looked like she was going to cry, so Bryony turned to another girl. ''Hey, what's your name?''
''Marietta,'' the girl said. She looked like she had really bad acne scars all across her face. Bryony thought they were sort of in a pattern, like a word, but she couldn't make it out. Bryony had flawless skin, and she felt really bad for Marietta.
''Hey, I could probably fix your, um, like, you know,'' Bryony said helpfully, pointing at her own face to show what she was talking about.
Marietta didn't say anything. She turned to Cho to try to make her feel better.
Bryony shrugged and pulled out her CD player. Fine, she thought. I was only trying to help. If I had skin like that, I'd probably kill myself. She slipped on her headphones and flipped open the latest issue of Teen Witch and started taking a quiz called, "Is Harry Potter the Wizard for You?" Bryony worked on the quiz, remembering that her mom had said Harry Potter went to Hogwarts. She wondered if she'd meet him soon, and what he'd be like. . .
And I swear I did not make that up, although I won't put the title or the author, because I consider myself to be a half-nice person.
Wait. You mentioned Sue friends?
Occasionally the author makes up more OC characters and puts them into the story with said Main Character Sue. Researchers at the Campaign Against Real Sues have found out the following:
They always come in threes.
They are always equally (but not quite as) thin, tall, curvy, tanned, pretty, sexy, foreign, cute, hot, exotic, stunning, dimpled, and seductive as the MCS.
Their purpose in the story is to make the Real Sue seem "popular" by following her around and copycatting her every move 24/7. They also giggle with her every other paragraph about "hawwwwtt" boys.
And, yes, the Real Sue is always amazingly popular.
Omg lyk whot do u guyz hav agenst mary suz? theyr lyk soooooo cute n preppy!
…in other words: the Conclusion
Real Sues are the plague of They ruin plots, disturb readers with terrifying images of…perverted scenes, can hold conversations like a plank, and are so two-dimensional most of them are about half a snog fest away from being a paper doll.
lyk wateva. u scuk.
My door's always open. Feel free to leave.
k. slam
-wipes brow- Thank God,
-waves to all the Real Sue haters out there- Love you guys! XD
THE END
A/N : Some time ago I read Terry Pratchett's The Unadulterated Cat. A week ago I picked it up again, read it again and thought, hmmm.
Wouldn't this be nice if he'd written it about Mary Sues, except with negative publicity instead of positive publicity?
Since Pterry probably doesn't know this site and the awful, awful shameless bad writing that goes on in it and most probably doesn't care anyway, I decided to write my own. This was a oneshot, by the way.
Don't flame me for writing.
Thanks.
Need I say the word 'review'?