A lot of people think that Wesley Crusher was a Mary Sue for Eugene Wesley Roddenberry.

And don't forget Anita Blake.

I get a 25, but then there are a lot of questions I wouldn't know the answer to.

Putting the protagonist of my novel through this, I only get a 16, which is heartening ... I think ...

I, like most 'old schoolers' into anime fanfics, usually call the first ones Oscarfics. Mainly because they're poorly written, have needless graphic sex, the characters acting VERY un-canon, and the self-insertion character having god-like abilities or powers. Oh, and of course everyone lusts after them. Now, if any art of Agatha and the Prince being 'involved' surfaces, and the talking cat AND her mechas are involved... Well, then we'd all be very, VERY scared and would want to take you to the Home for Overly-Sexed Hentai Writers & Artists for observation. Other than that, I'll quit my rambling and get back to writing about tentacle aliens invading a furry planet and Captian Jean-Luc Picard having to save the day with the help of Legolas and Professor Snape who can't stop having slash scenes...
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Stop drooling, fangirls! That was a JOKE! Sheesh...

You should let the maintainer know about Agatha's score, and tell us his reaction.

Wow, until I read the test I figured my main character was a Mary-Sue, but I only scored 51 so I'm not irredeemably lost...

74? Obviously I don't know the answers to some of the questions, but the highest I could get for Agatha was somewhere in the high 30s.

And personally, I wouldn't consider her a Mary-Sue -- a lot of the questions Agatha scores on are often true of protagonist characters (just usually not all at once, and Agatha doesn't suffer from that). I think the reason they're on the test is that Mary Sues often overload on literary cliches. But there's also a reason those things are literary cliches -- they're used in a lot of popular stories. So I wouldn't worry about it.

Note that someone who scored *low* on the test would, in all probability, be as exciting to read about as an accountant for a major chain of retail food stores. I.e., a perfect protagonist for those college professors who are sure that anything popular can't be art, especially since nothing they do has an audience of more than five....


---Walter

I think the important thing here is, this doesn't just apply to fanfic. It's quite prevalent in "professional" writing, as well.
Though I ran a character from a story I'm working on through, and he rated in the negative numbers. So I guess he's safe.

I rather dislike this... tendency to call any fairly powerful character a Mary-Sue. I mean, how often can you have a story where some utterly weak and pathetic character manages to defeat the Lord of Darkness or some Universe-Destroying-Entity before THAT gets old and boring?

Think of it: In order for a powerless untalented character to prevail against a universe-destroying force, you need blind luck. And having characters just prevail due to luck is despised even more than "Mary Sue"ness.

In my eyes, Mary Sue characters EXIST ONLY IN FANFICTION. If you are writing an original (well, as original as any story idea can be) story, then any "perfect" character is in fact just poor writing. Think of it for a second... no one wants to read about a character that can do anything without effort, is perfect in every way, and just walks through life without difficulty.

Ironically, Mary Sue definitions have expanded to encompass EVERY ASPECT of protagonistic characters. Does the character have a tortured past? It's a Mary Sue. Is the character a womanizer (or manizer)? Definite Mary Sue. Is the character powerful, either economically, magically, technologically, or in some other way? Has to be a Mary Sue. And if you mix and match... if you have a tortured character who sleeps around with the opposite (or same!) gender, and is powerful in some way... big-time Mary Sue. (By the way, that's a good description of Batman. Bruce Wayne is rich, he's physically at his prime and an excellent fighter, he's smart, he has several girlfriends (not all at the same time, but still!), he's got the tortured past (parents being murdered before his eyes), and so forth. So one of the most popular heroes from DC Comics is in fact a Mary Sue, according to the twits who came up with that list.)

The truth is, everything in moderation. You can have a character with a tormented past who is powerful in some way and even sleeps around, but they're balanced. They're not perfect, they're protagonists.

Oh, and Agatha isn't a Mary Sue. She's quite balanced, and the forces marshalling against her are quite potent. But then again, she tends to rely on luck at times as well. :D

Robert A. Howard

Out of curiosity, I ran a couple of my RPG PCs through that test, and I got a 47 and a 22. Considering the way I created them, I was really expecting higher scores. (Superhero RPG with my PC using my online nickname as his nom de guerre, and he still only scored 47.)

One thing to keep in mind is that the scores will depend, in part, on the setting. Girl Genius is based on the Mad Science of the pulps; that inevitably leads to high scores on a test like this. If you were doing a "roommate" webcomic instead, anything above a 40 would be extremely disturbing.

I'd say that one of the annoying aspects of a Mary Sue is the perceived lazyness. It can be like using cheat codes in a video game to become invulnerable or something, and then bragging about the inevitable score.