Hello. It's your most hated flamer here. Recently, I have had a total onslaught of e-mails and messages, asking me exactly what I thought a Mary-Sue was, and how in the world did I perceive their more-than-perfect character as cliché. Well, I'm here to give you my gist of the word.

Well, the official definition, or at least, the one that I find myself most often giving, is such: A Mary-Sue is a character who (normally) plays a major part in the plot line and is quite over characterized. Said character normally has cliché affectations and lacks major (if any) flaws. A Mary-Sue is put to use by an author purely for wish fulfillment.

Starting to get it yet? No? Well, I'll break it down a bit more.

Simply put, a Mary-Sue is perfect. She (in the writer's eyes) is original, is dashing, is comical, always says the right thing, has deep and meaningful thoughts, has guys chasing after her, never makes a fool of herself, is always forgiven, is gorgeous, never looks bad, gets fantastic grades, is kind to animals, hates cruelty, has overcome numerous and varying challenges, eats rainbows and poops butterflies and so on and so forth.

Now, first time writers out there, you're probably thinking, 'What's so wrong with having a perfect character?' Trust me, there is quite a bit.

Firstly, readers get bored and more often than not, will end up hating your character. No one, and I mean no one, likes to read about how little Miss Awesome saved the day twenty times in an hour. It's not realistic. People like to read about characters that are lifelike and have depth and feeling and flaws that they can relate with. Not about some plastic Barbie doll.

Secondly, 'perfect' characters tend to suck the life out of other characters. By emphasizing one's faultlessness, you hide the rest of your characters in the background. A high-quality writer will balance out his/her characters so that one is never the almighty one, who's light is blinding the other characters in the shadow of his/her pedestal.

Lastly, they tend to be badly written. Horribly written. Alright, most of them are a monstrosity to the literary world. If you ever stumble upon a well written Mary-Sue, notify me as soon as possible.

So essentially, that's the first installation of Mary-Sues 101. Soon to come: the many faces of Mary-Sue!

So Sincerely Yours.

The Not-So-Innocent Flamer