Mary Sue/Quotes
It was love at first sight
Inside Hogwarts school that night
When she walked up to the common room and he was waiting there for her.
He said, "Malfoy thinks you're hot."
"And Ron really thinks you're really hot."
"And for reasons unexplained to the readers I think you're hot too."
And she smiled as their lips met.
A scene we won't forget,
'Cause it was close to nineteen paragraphs long.—Rachel Robichaud, The Life of a Mary Sue
Cody answered again "I brought you here because I'm your biggest fan! I've always wanted to meet you in person, so I used my high intelligence to make a time machine to warp you in the future. Maybe we could have some butt kicking adventures or something."
Donatello pondered on what Cody said. "biggest fan...high intelligence...adventures...OH MY GOD! WE ARE IN A MARY SUE FANFIC!"
Everyone screamed.
I am everything you want, I am everything you need,
I am everything inside of you that you wish you could be.
I say all the right things, at exactly the right time,
But I mean nothing to you, and I don't know why...—Vertical Horizon, Everything You Want
"Twelve Times A Day Man"? You can't just start makin' up terrible new characters!
My attempt to define the difference between a character who is a sue, and one who is merely a protagonist, in the simplest way possible:
A protagonist is someone the story revolves around. A mary sue is someone the world revolves around.
Others still carry this meaning out to extremes, and use the term to describe anyone who isn't a homeless junkie or a brooding sociopath with an alignment of chaotic neutral.
Ron: Did you see that new student on the train? I think she's another one.
Harry: Yeah, I saw her.
Hermione: Another what?
(they see the new student, who has a radiant halo of light about her face)
Hermione: ...Oh.
The heroine is usually an heiress, probably a peeress in her own right, with perhaps a vicious baronet, an amiable duke, and an irresistible younger son of a marquis as lovers in the foreground, a clergyman and a poet sighing for her in the middle distance, and a crowd of undefined adorers dimly indicated beyond. Her eyes and her wit are both dazzling; her nose and her morals are alike free from any tendency to irregularity; she has a superb contralto and a superb intellect; she is perfectly well-dressed and perfectly religious; she dances like a sylph, and reads the Bible in the original tongues. Or it may be that the heroine is not an heiress–that rank and wealth are the only things in which she is deficient; but she infallibly gets into high society, she has the triumph of refusing many matches and securing the best, and she wears some family jewels or other as a sort of crown of righteousness at the end. Rakish men either bite their lips in impotent confusion at her repartees, or are touched to penitence by her reproofs, which, on appropriate occasions, rise to a lofty strain of rhetoric; indeed, there is a general propensity in her to make speeches, and to rhapsodize at some length when she retires to her bedroom. In her recorded conversations she is amazingly eloquent, and in her unrecorded conversations, amazingly witty.
Bob is so cool, other Mary Sue's weep at the mere mention of his name, for they know there's no way they could possibly be as cool as... well, you get the idea.
Are you frightened, by perfection?
Is this who you are, not who you want to be?—Plushgun, Just Impolite
"This has to be the most selfish, male-depending, uncaring, manipulative, self-centered, pretentious, idiotic, whining little bitch-bag you will ever see in your entire life! And honestly, that wouldn't be too bad a character, that'd be very, very interesting IF IT WAS INTENTIONAL!!!"
Perfect people are boring. Perfect people are obnoxious because they're better than us. Perfect people are, above all, too good to be true.
—How Not to Write A Novel, "Too Good To Be True"
Rey is dreadfully boring, with two primary facial expressions; deer in a headlight stare, and gritting teeth. The writers were so anxious to prove that girls can be “even more so” than men, that they’ve forgotten the first phase in the hero’s journey. When we first meet Luke, he’s a naive inexperienced farm boy, who complains about wanting to hang out with friends, gets scolded by his Uncle, gets knocked unconscious by a Tusken Raider, gets pushed down in a bar by a drunkard, has to be defended by an elderly Jedi, and gets his hand cut off during his very first lightsaber duel.
Not Rey though. She gets to skip the first phase of the hero’s journey so hear her roar! Somehow, she can pilot the Millennium Falcon and use a lightsaber all without any training at all. Sure she fumbles a bit getting the Falcon off the ground, but in only a couple of minutes, she’s evading Tie Fighters and deftly flying through the tight spaces of wrecked Star Destroyers. Not only is she Han Solo, but she’s Luke Skywalker too! Effectively fighting off a trained Knight of Ren, whatever that is, in her very first lightsaber battle.— Review of The Force Awakens by ItchyBacca