Typical Mary Sue Traits and How to Make Them Good

by NinjaEeveeKitty

I've recently been possessed by the spirit of the late 2000s to the early 2010s, so let's dig into the deep archives and talk about Mary Sues. I'm gonna take Mary Sue traits and teach you how to make them good, with a healthy dose of salt and personal opinion. Now complete!

2. What's in a Name?

What's in a Name?

This is possibly the most irritating claim to Mary Sue-ism. (That's a word now.) Why? Because names are wild. I have a friend who has a French name and not a lick of French in her. There are characters in other franchises with a ton of names because they're some variation of nobility. People change their names and go by aliases at certain points in their lives (discovering/coming out as trans, moving away from home, getting married, etc). So personally, I have a different viewpoint on the name problem in fandoms.

The first point of Mary Sue names is a really long name, which people often define as more than three names. Personally, I'm of the opinion that only the first name and surname are important to most characters. Other people like adding names. And honestly? Characters are probably only going to be referred to by their first name unless they're important or their friends or enemies want to make a point by using their longer names.

The second Mary Sue name point is that the names are often just words or words smashed together. And that's not exactly a terrible thing – words do often end up being names. Jasper, Forrest, Raven, Snow, all four seasons, Rogue, I even found "Blue" on a baby name website. Names for people have been getting more and more wild in the 21st century. Looking at this, it also covers the "dark/emo" names that people like to bash.

Now, we get to uniquely-spelled names. Which...is an interesting point because I knew three girls with three variations of the name "Katelyn" in 6th grade. Let's take the name "Kayla". Its variations include Kaylee, Kiley, Kaleigh, Kyla, Kylie, and even Kyle. I read somewhere that name variations with ridiculous spellings and the same pronunciation came from a trend of stealing the name another woman wanted to name their kid out of spite. It was a wild thing to read out of context.

And for the last point that I've only seen in one old guide, mashing up the name of the demigod's parents. It actually sounds like a really cool idea. Additionally, like Rick Riordan himself, you can hide the godly parent's name in the demigod's name – like how Annabeth has Athena in it and Clarisse has Ares in it. It's a neat little trick.

So in short, what's the big deal with names? As long as you can read it without too much of a struggle, a strange name shouldn't be that big of a deal.