Signs You Have Written An Actual Mary Sue

Signs You Have Written An Actual Mary Sue

*Insert SIREN NOISE As Writer Has Just Said "Mary Sue"* whoop

For the sake of clarity, I'm going to be using the term "Mary Sue" as a catchall term for characters that lack important flaws. I understand that the term is often disproportionally used against female characters but I want to use a recognizeable term for this issue.

Also, this advice is for "serious works of fiction". If this story isn't intended to be critically viewed by anyone else and is just meant for fun, write Mary Sue.

Okay? Ok!

What Is A Mary Sue?

A "Mary Sue" is a character who is defined by their inhumaness as they lack flaws and consequences. And that is the key term that defines the Mary Sue: "consequences".

The Mary Sue has the impressive ability to bend reality to serve it's own needs. Like a parasite!

But let's get to some specific signs

A: They Lack Substantial Flaws

"Substantial", in the world of writing, means "of plot significance"

Mary Sue often has flaws but they are either:

Fake Flaws that are never shown to the audience such as a character who is a horrible cook who never cooks

Cute Flaws that never impede on a character's likeability and success. Their anger issues never lead to bad impulsive decisions. Their naivety never loses it's "charm"

Substantial flaws are flaws that actively hurt a character's chances at getting their goal while simultaneously ruining the character's life.

Compelling Characters are tempted by vices, have their morals tested, fail spectacularly, and make bad decisions.

Mary Sues are enlightened characters whose bad decisions tend to be portrayed as a natural intuition. A character who never fails meaningfully.

p.s: flaws should be dark reflections of their good qualities. determined=stubborn. idealism=savior complex

B: They Lack Agency

Mary Sue, despite their wealth of charm and attractiveness, never makes active decisions.

They never make active decisions because Mary Sue is a character who is so perfect they have no desire, goal, or lack of something. Afterall, if someone has the ability to get anything they want, why would they want?

Mary Sue never has to change anything about themself to get a goal because they neither have imperfections or goals.

Instead, the plot comes racing at them as conspiracies, mysterious love interests, and practically God herself, desperately try to involve this mediocre individual in the drama for some reason!

As I have mentioned in my: Writing Advice: Give Your Characters Agency, characters need to have agency in order to have a compelling character and plot since narratives are based on the question "what is this character willing to do to get their goal"!

Mary Sue don't need to ponder this question since they don't have a goal. They either passively hope to survive while not doing anything active in order to try and survive or they just kinda walk around.

C: They Bend The Rules Of Reality

But not in a cool way. Like more of a bully kinda way.

I'll give you some quick examples of what types of "bending reality" exist since it kind of depends on the plot!

a: "Character A is not conventionally attractive, doesn't practice self-care, insults other, has a HUGE superiority complex, and is obnoxious. Yet for some reason, several characters crush on them when there’s no redeeming qualities."

b: "Character B fails to do something but it's okay because that failure allowed them to succeed and they actually end up winning overall"

For A: Basically, Mary Sue changes the character settings of other characters and often forces them outside of their typical behavior while not simultaneously providing a reasonable explanation for hy this happens.

For B: The plot caters exactly to their needs. Like even mistakes play out as victories because the plot develops in the direction making them being right in the end. Mary Sue doesn't get pushed by the plot here. They are the plot

I am unfamilar with Harry Potter so I can't do anything character-specific HOWEVER I can do a general guide line thing

I just want to ask for some details from you, @stabbyapologist

Basic gist of what your OC is like since I don't want the FBI to break into my room if your OC is underage

Are you only searching for advice on whether or not the concept is interesting or cliche or is there something more you are searching for?

To reiterate, I am exceedingly willing to do an entire post about this. I am only asking these questions both:

see if you are okay with my lack of fandom knowledge

What exactly you want since I want to give you the best

What Do YOU Need Writing Advice On?

I know I posted this a couple days ago but I am an unpopular tumblr account who barely gets interactions so constantly posting this question seems inevitable.

Again, ask me whatever you want. Anything. Heck, ask me to continue one of my previous series that you had an emotional attachment towards for some reason???

I finished it @melda0m3 :3

What Do YOU Need Writing Advice On?

I know I posted this a couple days ago but I am an unpopular tumblr account who barely gets interactions so constantly posting this question seems inevitable.

Again, ask me whatever you want. Anything. Heck, ask me to continue one of my previous series that you had an emotional attachment towards for some reason???

Let's talk hallucinations in whump/general fiction.

So first off full disclosure, I have schizoaffective disorder - think some bits of bipolar and some bits of schizophrenia kind of squished together, and as such hallucinations are a BIG part of my general existence.

Definition: A hallucination is a perception of a sensory experience—such as sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch—that appears real but is created by the mind and lacks an external stimulus.

Now, I see a fair few "hallucinations" type prompts in whump events, and just generally within the whump community, and I see a LOT of auditory hallucinations type prompt fills - mainly in the form of malevolent whispers - and ye that's a thing, but there are so many other hallucinations.

The thing is hallucinations can effect literally any sense, not just hearing - though I will add that auditory is usually regarded as the most common.

this is a long post so I am going to put a cut here... below the cut is exploration of the tyoes of hallucination, the causes and a bit about insight.

So, I thought it could be "fun" to explore a few in a post. Lets explore the 5 "main" senses first:

Auditory Hallucinations

Description: These are the most common type of hallucinations. They involve hearing sounds that are not present. The sounds are hear as if they are coming from somewhere external to the body. So in my case I have a few of these, but my main one is a voice who is with me even when I am in meds (another good point there for anyone who wants to use mental illness in their fics even in meds we can do have symptoms). This voice has a name and most of the time he just sorts off passes comments about things and people around me, like a sarcastic narrator and it sounds like he is standing just behind me.

Common Examples:

Malevolent Whispers: Insidious voices that might threaten, taunt, or belittle you.

Hearing Music: Melodies or songs playing that no one else can hear. For me this kind of sounds like someone is playing a radio in a different room.

Environmental Sounds: Hearing footsteps, doors creaking, or other sounds suggesting someone else is present.

Command Hallucinations: Voices that instruct or suggest (its not always ademand, sometimes more subtle and manipulative) you to do certain things, often with a compelling and distressing sense of urgency.

Less used examples:

Kind/supportive hallucinations: Voices that are encouraging, reassuring and supportive.

Distortion: Rather than sounds with no origin hallucinations that disort or warp actual sounds/voices changing the meaning, making it as if the TV or Radio is addressing you personally, making it sound as if a friend is threatening you.

Fun fact: it actually is possible to have a two way (sort of) conversation with a hallucination - I know I do it relatively often. It will be different for everyone, but fo me its a bit like having a conversation on a bad phoneline, yes the voice will respond but often its almost as if he hasn't fully heard what I said - or is ignoring key points. I can do this both outloud and "in my head".

Visual Hallucinations

Description: Visual hallucinations involve seeing things that are not present. These can range from simple shapes and flashes of light to detailed images or scenes. They often appear as if they are in the physical world and can be very convincing.

Common Examples:

Shadowy Figures: Seeing indistinct, shadowy forms that may move or appear to watch the character.

Distorted Faces: Perceiving familiar faces as grotesque or altered in frightening ways.

Apparitions: Full-bodied figures that may interact with the character or appear menacing.

Lights/sparkles: The whump community seems to very much enjoy lights and sparkles, especially in drugging.

Less Used Examples:

Intrusive Visuals: Images of disturbing or graphic nature that suddenly appear in your line of sight.

Perceptual Distortions: Objects appearing to warp, change shape, or color in unnatural ways.

Double Vision: Seeing multiples of objects or people, creating a confusing and disorienting experience.

Scenery Shifts: The entire environment changes, making you believe they are in a completely different place.

Fun fact: Sleep deprivation can cause some wild visual hallucinations, even relatively "mild" sleep deprivation can start to effect a persons perceptions.

Gustatory Hallucinations

Description: Gustatory hallucinations involve tasting things that are not actually present in the mouth. These can range from pleasant to extremely unpleasant tastes and can be triggered without any external food or drink.

Officially these are considered "rare", but personally (as someone who has done a lot of peer support work in the psychosis/voice hearing community I think they are simply under reported.)

Common Examples:

Bitter or Metallic Taste: A persistent bitter or metallic taste in the mouth, often leading to a sense of unease or concern about poisoning.

Sweet or Sour Taste: Tasting something sweet or sour unexpectedly, which can be confusing if it doesn’t match the current context.

Less Used Examples:

Spoiled Food: Tasting something rancid or spoiled, causing nausea and distress.

Unfamiliar Tastes: Tasting something completely unfamiliar and hard to describe, adding to the character's sense of disorientation.

Mimicking Actual Foods: Tasting specific foods that trigger cravings or aversions, despite not eating anything.

Transforming food: Food tasting like other food - I know someone for whom everything tasted like strawberries for days.

Common Causes: Neurological conditions or can be a side effect of medications.

Olfactory Hallucinations

Description: Olfactory hallucinations involve smelling odors that are not actually present. These can be pleasant or unpleasant and occur without any corresponding external stimulus. They can be particularly disorienting because they may trigger memories or emotions associated with certain scents - extremely complex if the person also has PTSD.

Common Examples:

Burning Smell: Wood, rubber, or food, which can lead to panic and fear of a fire.

Rotting Flesh: An overpowering smell of decay or rotting flesh, causing distress and nausea.

Perfume or Flowers: Smelling strong scents like flowers or perfume - hallucinations don't have to be inherently unpleasant sensations.

Less Used Examples:

Chemical Smells: Smelling chemicals like bleach or petrol.

Unfamiliar Scents: Smelling odors that you cannot identify.

Food Smells: Smelling specific foods that trigger hunger or nausea, despite the absence of any actual food.

Tactile Hallucinations

Description: Tactile hallucinations involve feeling sensations on or under the skin that are not actually there. These can range from mild tingling to severe pain and can be extremely distressing.

Common Examples:

Crawling Sensation: Feeling as though insects or bugs are crawling on or under the skin - often leading to frantic scratching or picking.

Electric Shocks: Experiencing sudden, sharp, electric-like jolts.

Pressure: Feeling pressure or tightness around certain body parts, such as a hand gripping the arm or something heavy on the chest.

Less Used Examples:

Temperature Changes: Feeling extreme cold or heat on the skin without any external cause.

Wetness or Dripping: Feeling as though liquid is dripping or running down the skin, even when dry.

Phantom Touches: Sensations of being touched or grabbed, often when alone. Sometimes its an almost feather like touch, other times its more akin to a grab that if reak would leave a bruise.

Right now let's expand - because there are more than 5 senses.

Proprioceptive Hallucinations

Description: Proprioception is the sense of the relative positioning of one's body parts. Proprioceptive hallucinations involve distorted perceptions of where your body is in space or how it is moving.

Common Examples:

Floating Sensation: Feeling as if the body is levitating or moving without control.

Distorted Body Size: Perceiving limbs or the entire body as being unnaturally large or small.

Less Used Examples:

Misaligned Limbs: Feeling as though limbs are twisted or out of place.

Movement Hallucinations: Sensing movements that aren't occurring, like swaying or rotating.

Common causes: Neurological disorders or the effects of certain drugs, but can by caused by a huge array of things.

Vestibular Hallucinations

Description: Vestibular sensations involve balance and spatial orientation. Vestibular hallucinations affect your sense of balance, making you feel dizzy or as though you're moving when you're stationary.

Common Examples:

Vertigo: A spinning sensation, as if the environment or oneself is rotating.

Imbalance: Feeling as though you're about to fall over or can't maintain your balance.

Less Used Examples:

Motion Sensation: Sensing movement, like rocking or swaying, when you're still.

Gravity Distortions: Feeling as if gravity is stronger or weaker than it actually is.

Common caused: Inner ear issues, migraines, or anxiety.

Temporal Hallucinations

Description: Temporal hallucinations involve distorted perceptions of time. They can make time feel like it's speeding up, slowing down, or standing still.

Common Examples:

Time Dilation: Feeling as though time is passing much slower than it actually is.

Time Compression: Perceiving time as moving rapidly, making events feel like they're passing in a blur.

Less Used Examples:

Frozen Moments: Experiencing time as if it's stopped, with everything around you appearing frozen.

Temporal Displacement: Feeling as though you're living in a different time period.

Temporal Dissonance: Feeling as if time is moving differently for you in comparison to those around you.

Common caused: Extreme fatigue, high stress, or under the influence of certain drugs.

Interoceptive Hallucinations

Description: Interoception refers to the perception of sensations from within the body, such as hunger, thirst, or the feeling of a heartbeat. Hallucinations in this realm involve feeling internal sensations that aren't actually occurring.

Common Examples:

False Hunger: Feeling extremely hungry despite having eaten recently.

Nonexistent Thirst: An intense sense of thirst even when well-hydrated - I have had this one a few times and given myself electrolyte imbalances due tot he amount of water I ended up drinking (not fun).

Less Used Examples:

Phantom Heartbeats: Feeling the heart racing or skipping beats without any physical basis.

Digestive Sensations: Sensations of digestion, such as gurgling or bloating, without any real cause.

Common causes: Panic disorder or certain types of seizures.

Right, now lets quickly review the main "causes" of hallucinations

Mental Illness:

Schizophrenia: Can involve basically anything from this list, but anecdotally auditory and visual appear to be the most common.

Bipolar Disorder: Can include hallucinations, especially during manic or depressive episodes.

Schizoaffective Disorder: A combination of symptoms from both schizophrenia and mood disorders, often leading to a variety of hallucinations.

EUPD/BPD: Auditory hallucinations are relatively common.

In all of these the hallucinations will rarely (if ever) exist in isolation. If you do not have primary or secondary experience of mental illness then I would recommend doing a LOT of research - and talking to people who do (on this note my asks are open if anyone has any schizoaffective based questions).

Neurological Conditions:

Epilepsy: Particularly temporal lobe epilepsy, can cause a range of sensory hallucinations.

Parkinson's Disease: Can lead to visual and auditory hallucinations.

Migraine: Migraine auras can include visual and auditory hallucinations.

Once again the hallucinations will not be in isolatation so same advice as with mental illness.

Substance Use and Withdrawal:

Psychedelics: Drugs like LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline are known for causing vivid visual and auditory hallucinations.

Stimulants: Methamphetamine and cocaine can cause tactile and visual hallucinations.

Alcohol Withdrawal: Can lead to visual, auditory, and tactile hallucinations.

You know what I am going to say that my "if you do not have experience of this then go talk to someone who does" advice may just stand for every potential cause.

Sleep Disorders:

Sleep Deprivation: Can cause a variety of hallucinations across different senses.

Narcolepsy: Often includes hypnagogic (while falling asleep) and hypnopompic (while waking up) hallucinations.

Medical Conditions:

Delirium: Acute confusion and hallucinations often seen in severe infections, fever, or after surgery.

Dementia: Especially Lewy body dementia and Alzheimer's disease, can cause hallucinations.

Medications:

Anticholinergics: Can cause hallucinations as a side effect.

Steroids: High doses can sometimes lead to hallucinations.

Certain Antidepressants and Antipsychotics: Occasionally, these medications can cause hallucinations.

Psychological Stress and Trauma:

PTSD: Flashbacks and hallucinations related to traumatic events.

Extreme Stress: Can sometimes trigger hallucinations.

Metabolic and Endocrine Disorders:

Thyroid Disorders: Hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism can sometimes cause hallucinations.

Electrolyte Imbalances: Severe imbalances can lead to hallucinations.

Deprivation:

Sensory Deprivation: Go google the ganzfeld effect, it's facinating.

Isolation: Extended periods of isolation can lead to hallucinations, known as sensory deprivation hallucinations.

Autoimmune Disorders:

Lupus: Can cause neurological symptoms including hallucinations.

Tumors:

Brain Tumors: Depending on their location, they can cause hallucinations affecting different senses.

Ok, finally point for this post. Let's discuss insight, because it is not as black/white or binary as people seem to assume.

Definition: Insight, in this context, refers to the awareness and understanding that one's hallucinations are not real but are a product of their mind. Insight can be partial or complete, and it often fluctuates.

Complete Insight:

Description: The individual fully understands that their hallucinations are not real and are caused by an underlying condition.

Impact: This can help the person manage their symptoms more effectively and seek appropriate treatment. However, it doesn't necessarily lessen the distress caused by the hallucinations.

Partial Insight:

Description: The individual has some awareness that their hallucinations might not be real but can still struggle with differentiating them from reality.

Impact: This can lead to confusion and anxiety, as the person oscillates between believing and doubting their experiences.

Lack of Insight:

Description: The individual firmly believes that their hallucinations are real and external.

Impact: This can lead to significant distress and functional impairment, as the person might respond to these hallucinations as if they were real.

Now imagine these three points on a scale from 0 (complete insight) to 10 (lack of insight) a person can be anywhere on this scale, and can slide back and fourth along it.

Factors such as stress, fatigue, medication changes, or daily fluctuations in mental state can cause insight to vary. A person might have high insight at one moment and low insight the next.

Basically Insight Is Not Static.

Also sometimes insight is just FREAKING RANDOM fluctuation for no discernible reason - honestly at times there is zero logic.

so ye, halluncinations… the brain is freaking wild.

Disclaimer - this is by no means an exhaustive list and like with many things every individual will experience these things slightly differently.

A similar post about delirium A similar post about fever

How To Reinvent Cliches

Warning: I am going to be talking exclusively about Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows. Luckily, I never watched them or interacted with the fandom. There are no spoilers!

From @stabbyapologist we have our first non-mutual request: "Should I, or should I not, make the oc try to seduce Severus Snape as a bargaining to stay alive so Bellatrix doesn't torture her anymore? Is it interesting or constantly used?"

To address concerns, OC is NOT underage and the story is particularly dark so we won't be talking about anything relating to that.

Again, like I told this person, I can't give character-specific advice. And for the sake of getting more interaction, this post won't only apply to this specific situation :)

Interesting AND Cliche?

I can't say personally whether or not this counts as cliche since I don't read harry potter fanfiction HOWEVER I can say this: Your stories will always include tropes so all you need to do is to reinvent and reuse tropes in an interesting way!

When giving advice on tropes I think this is an important one:

"Think of your story like a closet where the characters are your clothing and the hangers are your tropes"

Tropes are the foundations that shouldn't be physically seen until someone is doing some literary analysis.

To reiterate, what makes a trope lack intrigue is whether or not it's handled with care by the author. If the hanger is just thrown into the closet and is not holding up anything, it's a poorly laid out thing.

You can practically use whatever tropes/hangers you like as long as you are able to disguise them underneath characters and worldbuilding.

If you can make your OC trying to seduce Severus Snape into a natural extension of this character and their circumstances then the development is going to seem natural and logical :)

How To Reinvent Tropes?

There are various different ways of revamping tropes so i'll just run through some common ones!

Change the expected ending. If it isn't required to succeed, having OC fail in seducing Severus Snape would be an unexpected plot development!

Bring It Back Down To Earth. This is when the author understands something to be inherently fucked up and writes it as fucked up. By having your OC acknowledge how horrible and humiliating this situation is, you have not only limited possible romanticization but also changed the trope's aftertaste.

Plot Twist. In general, using tropes as plot twists can definitely work. Since I don't know your story all I can do is spitball. Severus Snape is revealed to be evil? Bellatrix wanted this to happen?

Conclusion:

We covered the fact that tropes can be interesting regardless of their "constantly used" status and we covered some common ways to reinvent tropes!

So @stabbyapologist, have I given you good advice?