============================== On the concept of "Mary Sue" ============================== :CreationDate: 2014-03-19 12:05:08 :Id: mary-sue :tags: - rant There's about as many different definitions of "Mary Sue" as there are people who talk about it, so I'm going to write my own: A Mary Sue is a wish-fulfilment character, who is absurdly competent at anything they do, and/or loved by everyone else, and/or repeatedly saves the day, and/or steals the show from what should theoretically be the protagonist, all with no good (or none at all) in-story explanation. The name comes from a parody story published in 1973 in a Star Trek fanzine (see page 25 of `this history of ST fanzines `_ for the full text), but soon spread to many other fandoms. One of the most problematic aspects of the term is that it's a woman's name, and many people can't seem to conceive of a badly-written, over-powerful wish-fulfilment character that also happens to be a man: consider that, after all, `Batman has most of the traits of a Mary Sue `_, but very few people seem to notice. For a very in-depth, but not exactly balanced, analysis of the idea, `TVTropes is always a good starting point `_, and `the Wikipedia article has useful references `_.