Mary Sue Litmus Test

[Circe]

The question what is a "mary sue or gary stu" came up in our Discord a few days ago. I've had the opportunity to read through the original litmus test over on Springhole.net.

What I feel with this test is while some characters may turn on slightly sue like, the original author doesn't always take into account worlds where something might be normal.

Like with the Mythical Crimes Unit, our already fucked up world has a layer of magic and intrigue added on top. This can make for some pretty over the top characters, but for that world they're actually pretty disgustingly normal.

I ran my primary character through and initially got a -3, which says they're too flat. Went through again and got an 11, which tells me they're almost running the risk of sue-ification. This just tells me that this litmus test doesn't take the research that a lot of people put into world building and characters into account. It also doesn't take into account that bad things and really crazy things can happen to anyone.

Now.. if your character has all the men and women falling at their feet.. then we've either got Aphrodite or a problem.

www.springhole.net/writing/marysue.htm

[littlekreen]

some of the problem is the quiz can't account for environmental factors. It's probably assuming conventional human society. I mean technically any of the males in the dino flynn's world would be fawned over but that's because they're only born 30% of the time and a majority of those have defects of genetic diseases so they're heavily selected against.

[Circe]

This is true.

The test assumes a conventional world, and doesn't take normalcy in a different one into account.

I've ran across characters that initially look like a sue, but when plugged into their world are pretty normal.

[littlekreen]

Took the race version of that for the lay bugs, and got a 2, though there certainly may be exceptions. The matriarchs a 7. That sounds about right though there's bits that have a problem applying to a partly eusocial one. Jaunt ended up a 4 on the test as he's not got a very developed backstory but half the things I just don't write that way. I could probably find a character in my list for the high 20s but gad.