Oh gosh the worst Mary Sue trope for me would have to be the one where the MC is just invincible like no amount of power or anything will defeat her because she’s the chosen one and the most powerful. On the rare occasion that she does get badly injured she’ll usually just be in a coma for a little while then wake up with all her brain functions and muscles completely intact. If anybody here has seen Kill Bill vol 1 you’ll know the scene where she’s just woke up from her coma and guess what? she can’t walk because her muscles have deteriorated. So why is Miss Mary Sue MC running around going to save the day with her purple eyes and perfect body?
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Fairy Tail.
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I hate the one where the Mary-Sue is too good for her own good… she loves everyone is and is always selflessly doing good deeds. The only people who hate her are the ‘mean rich girl’ and the mother of the golden boy, and the only reason they hate her is because she’s poor. Usually there’s this scene where the MC accidentally spills something on the mean girl’s ultra-expensive designer outfit, making the mean girl throw a raging fit and therefore making her scream uncontrollably at the poor little Mary-Sue. However, the mean girl begins to hate Mary-Sue with a passion once she finds out they love the same guy.
B-O-R-I-N-G
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It’s not common to see, but I hate when the Sue becomes queen bee, the alpha’s mate, vampire’s bride, or something else normally unacheivable (cough cough alien queen)
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When everyone loves the protagonist. But she’s so “insecure”
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I know some of this has been said but here’s my list:
MC’s flaws aren’t really flaws.
For example, some of you mentioned how there are never any consequences for her shyness. I agree! Being shy can lead to people reading you wrong and it can be harder for others to intersect with you.
Or she’s “ugly” but she has all the generic features that people find pretty. Sometimes there’s only one thing that makes her ugly and it tends to be her glasses or clothes. When she removes her glasses/changes her clothes, she is suddenly the most beautiful girl in the story.
MCs who barely have a personality
No seriously, this is a biiiig one for me. This is a weird one to explain but you can’t quite pinpoint what type of girl she is and it’s kind of boring to play as her. She does everything right and/or doesn’t actually do anything.
Like her friend might be the outgoing one and drag her to all the parties but she doesn’t do much and is rather dull. She doesn’t have any goals or something that drives her. She doesn’t do anything that properly exhibits her strengths or flaws.
MCs with overused personalities that aren’t actually done well
There are three major ones I’ve picked up on.
- The shy, nerdy and unpopular girl. She usually wears glasses and is described as ugly. The pretty girls hate her but every boy is in love with her. She’s usually innocent, naive as heck. Spineless and her LI(s) sticks up for her. She usually goes on to become a bitch (typically after a makeover) OR stays soft and pure forever.
- Queen Bee. Beautiful. B*tchy. Says everyone loves her in the narrative but you know they all hate her. She’s just really rude but gets away with it. Once again no actual character development. Tends to get angry at everyone.
- The more common and weirder combination of the two: The Bad Girl/‘Rebel’. The narrative says she’s tough but she’s just b*tchy for no reason. High-key abusive. She threatens everyone. Thinks she’s cool but is actually a horrible person. Swears all the time/calls people names.
[I could go on but let’s stop that one there]
MC’s life revolving around her love interest (mainly male ones)
Now this one comes in a bunch of flavours. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s subtle but we’ve all seen this. She basically can’t function without them. Her thoughts revolve around them, they control every aspect of her life even if they don’t know it. Like ffs give the girl some aspirations even if it’s lying in bed. Now I hate this one because it’s promoting unhealthy behaviour, girl can have a career AND a love life.
MC has subpar friends
Okay this annoys me because it feeds into the MC revolving around her LI trope.
MC usually has friends who only talk about her getting with LI when she denies her feeling for them or encourages her to stay away when she wants them.
Basically MCs friends are either a bad influence on her, are a poor support system for her or only exist to discuss the LI when they are off-screen. This has been a major problem with romance stories for me and is a reason why I’m not a big fan of it as a story’s main genre.
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This was kind of long and I haven’t slept yet so forgive me for straying from my point or making any errors but yeah.
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The worst for me is the purple eye obsession. Why do Mary Sues so often have purple eyes? Or different coloured eyes?
I’ll be honest, my OC Azuriel has two different colored eyes because I think it looks neat. It’s not that deep.
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I agree with absolutely every single one of those! Thanks for being so in depth about it! 
I don’t understand why people are so hell bent on making their MCs hard to like!
I’m not gonna lie: the fact that I’ve read so many stories like this has really started to affect the way I write. I’m writing two Wattpad stories at the moment and one of my MCs is supposed to be awkward and naive. She never sticks up for herself. She only gets angry when other people are abused or hurt. It took me about three drafts for her to actually have consequences for her shyness and not be like the common MC 
And don’t even get me started on the other MC! She was a private investigator and now she’s a soldier so she’s supposed to be quite no-nonsense. Again, my brain was saying “most MCs who are no nonsense swear too much”
It’s a good thing we have threads like this to make ourselves aware of tropes like that!
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No problem, I kind of had fun writing that. Honestly it is kind of hard to make an uncommon MC but as long as you’re doing it right I think it’s okay for them to be shy or mean. Seeing them develop from that is also really satisfying because a shy MC can finally learn to stick up for herself or a mean MC starts to treat people better after suffering some consequences but we rarely see that in stories. So maybe an unchanging MC is also what makes us hate this tropes?
I’m glad this thread exists though, we can always refer to it when we’re a unsure ^~^
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I was nodding along to the whole thing, Mary sues are just universal
For every point you made I could think of an equally bad sister trope for the action adventure genres, lol
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Oh my god you’re right, there are the genre-specific mary sues! Why didn’t I add that?
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It’d be different if you’re using it for fantasy reasons or just have a reason. People keep giving characters Violet eyes as if they’re an actual eye color people regularly have, which isn’t it.
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Hehe, I can go through your post and give all the sister tropes I know later on no worries. We can really flesh out the bad tropes 
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Sounds good 
I definitely need to think of a fantasy and adventure version now.
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Even in fantasy settings it just annoys me. People making a canon reason for the sole purpose of adding a little Mary-Sue sparkle to their MCs xD
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best mary sue
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I’ve seen quite a couple of Mary Sues in Episode stories. But the funny thing is, a lot of them were in situations where they were completely helpless, and they always needed the LI to save the day.
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Ugh. Mary Sues in distress. That’s the worst hybrid ever
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Not sure what is my pet peeve about Mary-Sue so I’m going to agree with all of yous on the stories with such unlikable MCs as I did made a thread about this, asking all of yous if you know any Episode story with such unlikable MCs even though I am perfectly fine with the MC slowly losing that unlikable personality.
It’s so annoying when they make conflate glasses, baggy clothing with ugliness when this doesn’t really happen in real life. You know, when the pretty & popular girls pick on that “ugly” girl. I’d like to see a story where the pretty & popular girl gets picked on by unpopular girls since the whole pretty girl bullies “ugly” girl gets boring af.
Makeovers are also annoying. Why should the MC change for everyone else? Fair enough if she wants to do it at her merit but I don’t see the point of getting a makeover to impress anyone.
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- You are the chosen one
- Zero flaws. (A “hack” to write the protagonist)
- Parents got killed in the first episoee and she’ll vow to seek revenge.
- She’s basically immortal in the story.
- Poorly written dark past that has nothing to do with the story.
- Brains? Check. Beauty? Check. Brawns? Check.
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