The M/Gary Sue plague or why characters should not be gods.

It has been an interesting week as I have been busy writing a short, working on NaNoWriMo and reviewing some manuscripts sent to me. In the two stories, I found both of the protagonists very distasteful. I found nothing likeable about them or anything that I could latch onto to make me care about them or the story.

Looking back over my notes and scribbles I realized what it was about the characters that I didn’t like, they were simply unbeatable. They could do everything, handle all opposition they faced and barely batted an eyelash facing the main villain. I realized with horror that they were Mary/Gary Sue characters.

What is a Mary/Gary Sue you ask?  Well a typical M/Gary is an original character that the writer does for a fan fiction story that serves as an idealized version of the author mainly for the purpose of Wish Fulfillment. The character is commonly an unsurpassed beauty or handsome character often having very distinct hair or eye color, and has a similarly cool and exotic name. They are exceptionally skilled in a wide variety of areas, and may possess talents that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting. These characters also lack any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws or their "flaws" are endearing and cute.

These characters also have extensive, unusual and super dramatic back-stories. This means that the canon protagonists are overwhelmed with admiration for these characters and their beauty, wit, courage and other virtues, and quickly adopt this character as one of for acceptance into the inner circle of true companions.  

The M/Gary sue  has some sort of very close relationship to the writer’s favorite canon character be it a love interest, illegitimate child, as never-before-mentioned sibling, or any other extremely implausible way to insert the character into the story.

At this point, the canon characters are nothing more than awestruck cheerleaders, watching from the sidelines as M/Gary excels in the areas of expertise reserved for the canon characters and solving problems that have stymied them for the entire series.

This is the problem, as I read the manuscripts I found that the plot lines and I had to ask a friend who is an aficionado of animes, if the plot sounded familiar to him. To which he stated that they sound like the plots from Highschool of the Dead and When They Cry.

With that information, I sent back an email to the two writers explaining that I didn’t find the stories very good because I couldn’t follow the character development. Simple questions such as what’s the Prize for the character wants in the end? If they are able to do everything, and they could, what is the reason for the story? How will they grow emotionally in the story, after all they seemed perfectly adjusted and had no foreseeable issues regarding the plot? What is possibly the bleakest moment in the story for the character, because after reading them I found that even the darkest possible point was nothing more than a bump in the road for the characters?

I haven’t had a response from either one, but I suspect because I pointed out the issues I had with these stories and the ridiculous characters, I probably won’t. I suspect we all have had stories where our first characters were M/Gary Sues, but as a writer getting past that wish fulfillment phase is a must to produce better, more rounded characters and stories. I sent them both an email praising their creativity trying to elicit a response, but I suspect I bruised their egos and they will have nothing further to do with me.