oh my god i remember being TERRIFIED of “accidentally making a mary sue” so i literally spent hours researching how to make a “good oc” out of fear that i’d be made fun of
SAMEEEEE. It made me so critical of others’ characters as well. Nowadays I still have a bit of that cynicism, but I try to be healthy about it and not care about other characters. I’ve realized that I’ve come to enjoy Mary Sues and will defend them with my life
I think the whole Mary Sue thing went from an earnest attempt at helping newbie writers avoid a common pitfall to bullying kids for not being immediately aware of said pitfall.
@@nakoruruwantspepsi1556 Not just kids but neurodivergent people. Cringe culture is just about bullying neurodivergent people, kids, and neurodivergent kids.
Agreed, and I think another part of it (At least for fancharacters and RP characters) is just the need for some rules or baseline. When you're RPing with others, or creating and sharing an fancharacter to interact with other fancharacters, it can be hard for everyone to get along and have fun if there's no clear baseline or rules to follow. And it can quickly spiral because of it. (To put it in simple terms, it's like if you're playing D&D. You don't want to be the Level 1 Wizard in a party where everyone else is Level 20 and ready to verse God himself while if you take one wrong move your character will drop dead from a simple gust of wind.) And it's a baseline or at least understanding between players that's needed which the basic rules of RP etiquette don't exactly cover. I think in part the Anti-Mary Sue craze might have also been in part to try to make a steadfast baseline for everyone.
I work at a daycare and I'm happy to announce that even in this generation, playground roleplay mary sues still exist. There's this one kid that constantly heals everyone whenever they pretend to get hurt and always say things like "and I grow wolf ears and you're really shocked" and I kid you not, one time they named themselves "Diamond Axe Wolf."
I love how the non Mary Sue character in that diagram had “clumsy” “can’t dance” and “bad at math” as character flaws as though those aren’t the most token ideas of flaws.
i remember seeing "clumsy" listed as a mary sue trait, because apparently it could easily be turned into a charming quirk (e.g. character is endearingly clumsy around their crush, but also a very skilled fighter). you just couldn't win.
@@jessecaalvarez-kuykendall7071 To Be fair, she was Emotionally dead even before becoming Vampire. She would be great at "try not to laugh" challenges, with her constant resting B*tch face.
as someone who is clumsy to the point of running into every wall in a 50 mile radius and therefore is too clumsy to dance without falling over, and is horrible at both math and geography to the point of calling geography "geometry", I'm extremely worried I will be called out for being the irl version of a mary sue
I respect that greatly, ever since i was a young cringelet i have been living in fear of any accounts ive had being targeted by the good ol middle 2010s art rant/ cringe comp community
@Cinnamon Toothpaste On the one hand absolutely agree (thankfully I was mostly safe cause I don't think rp posting forums ever got big enough to get roasted publicly on youtube), on the other can we push for cringelet to be a thing now? Its too perfect.
Shout out to all the people brave enough to share their ancient ocs with the class, I would actually shrivel up into dust if someone saw all my made-up SCPs from late elementary school/early middle school😭
Plot twist: I was a hater at some point, yet still clung to a rainbow gem connected to god powers. Yes, I made it up for my originalish world. I insisted I wasn't making Sues. I still was via that damned gem. They've since been reworked bc they genuinely didn't fit in a seriously written narrative I was weaving for a world, but I find it funny that my little bit of hypocrisy came in the form of a classic Sue trope.
@@wolfynerd14 Honestly I just make Mary sues for fun now but I used to be so scared of making my character too perfect that I gave them so many flaws that they were just miserable- 💀
@@Mumther_Flame This entire video makes me want to resurrect the old Sue version of a character I made when I was 8 for the lolz too. It just looks like it'd be fun and also test my artistic skill considerably, since I definitely need practice in color studies (ie color shading and digital rendering).
I remember the exact moment I stopped taking accusation of "this character is a Mary Sue" seriously. It was when, back when I wrote fanfiction, one of my stories had a part where a mailman delivers a letter.... the mailman was not even really a named character and he disappears from the story after delivering that one letter.... and yet, just because he wasn't a named character from the source material, I suddenly was hearing cries that he was a Mary Sue self insert. I wish I was joking.
Of course people thought it was a self insert, who doesn’t want to be a mail man! In all honesty though I understand that, as a fanfic writer I never put any characters that wasn’t in the source material in my fic for fear that something like that would happen, over time I started to care less, but like it’s just weird that people care so much? And will try to call out and make fun of the littlest things.
@@lilwoofs Yeah, honestly as I got older I started to feel like fanfic writing as a whole was.... well, people always say its good training for being a real writer.... but the problem is, I feel like it imparts all the wrong lessons, because fandoms have fundamentally different desires and expectations than, say, a guy picking up a random book off a shelf might. As such, a lot of the lessons you learn from writing fanfiction are basically not usable in a non-fanfiction context, and in fact can trap you.
Someone once mentioned Mary Sues are an answer from kids who were bullied into believing they couldn't do anything and so they made characters that could do anything. Been kinda hard to hate on Mary Sues ever since I read that, it's just a way for traumatized kids to cope and dream.
As someone who has fully embraced my cringe and loves looking back on my old "mary-sues" from when I was a kid, I love seeing other people's old Mary Sues or Gary Stus! When my little brother and sister make their first Mary Sue, or Gary Stu, or Sparkle Dog, I cant wait to see it and encourage them to keep drawing and creating! Nothing as amazing as seeing baby's first self insert OC.
I helped my 2 neices make ocs and one was aculy prety cool with a mostly normal grey wolf, with a sort of neclace witch if i remember right had a paw shape and blue right back leg the other one was partecly just bunch of random colors and their both 6
My brother made a mary sue/gary stu named Rain Whale who can one shot every ocean creature with a rainbow beam, it has 5 dorsal fins and it can fly. He is going to kindergarten, Im so proud of him :)
As a kid on the internet I became so afraid of accidentally making Mary Sue OCs (I had received horrible comments, been harassed, reposted on "cringe oc" blogs, etc) that I started looking at those "How to not make your OC a Mary Sue" guides, which led me to read more about character design, which led me to watch chara design courses on TH-cam, which eventually... led me to become absolutely IN LOVE with character designing and concept art. I'm a professional character designer now, haha.
Oh my goodness this is me too!!! I love character design so much and my favorite thing to do is help other people flesh out characters and stuff! Usually by just spitballing ideas at them and letting them pick if they thing they're cool ideas for their characters or not (I play a lot of d&d and sometimes am DM). My dream is to be a professional character designer for animation and stuff. Not sure if it'll happen but a man can dream.
Hahaha, me too! I'm a designer because I was so afraid to make these types of characters, and I was into D&D a lot so I was always making characters all the time. It revealed to be one of my passions
as someone who’s first oc was “waffles the eevee, a lol random all powerful being married to alter cipher, bill cipher’s tsundere twin brother who could transform into an alicorn”, mary sues have been a prominent part of my artistic development lmao. really enjoyed this video
Oh man! My mom was the best when it came to My Little Pony OC’s. All of my siblings liked to draw, including me, so my mom took our OC’s and turned them into stuffed animals! They were so beautiful and I loved them so much
For some reason, I actually kinda like how bright and chaotic Mary sues designs are. It’s extreme randomness has some sorta weird ass charm to me, even though I’m trying to learn how to animate :,)
I swear all OC creators go through this same pipeline. Making mary sues, to hating them/being scared of creating them, to being chill with them and finding them cute/cool as the fun self-insert wish fulfillment they actually are. That's growth.
Im in this comment and I don’t like it. Tho but fr you go from basically making yourself a self insert power fantasy, to making essentially a depressed version of yourself, and then you shift back to just, doing whatever you want without caring. lol I went from a Fox anthro me character who could shapeshift, to a dude wearing a porcelain madi gras mask and basically just being me but with thirteen “he’s sad”, to just being “hey, its my self insert/avatar, i draw myself as a dude with tree branches as antlers… I may be cringe, but I am free.”
@@jamzee_ for me these days it tends to vary depending on whether something’s just for me or for general consumption, too. Virtually everything I watch/read I’ll have my own self-insert that only exists within my own mind. I never write fanfic, it’s all just a series of daydreams, but they’re self-insert OCs nonetheless, and they’re all the most wish-fulfilly, cringey, Mary Sue-enest things to have ever been dreamt up. And that’s fine, because I’m never going to subject any innocent bystanders to them; in the safety of my own mind, I can be as cringe as I care to be. When it comes to writing content I actually want people to engage with, however, I try to make everyone a little more rounded lmao
I vividly remember being in the my little pony fandom on good ol deviantart back when it was popular and there was this 14 year old girl who had a "mary sue" mlp oc and she got so much backlash for it she kept redesigning her oc to make her less of a mary sue but people were never satisfied. i think she ended up putting her up as an adoptable and the person who got it said they were gonna redesign her completely. kinda messed up looking back on it.
That definitely sucks that she couldn't have her fun :( i remember vividly watching "how to make a good oc" videos because of how scared i was on making a Mary sue
all my childhood ocs were 100% Mary Sues. Everytime id roleplay w/ my cousins and siblings I’d always say shit like “He can actually read ur mind um so he dodged.” It was EMBARRASSING and they never wanted to play w me 😭💀
You just unlocked a childhood memory in me! One time as a little kid I was roleplaying with my friends, and we all played as different characters from shows and stuff. I was a totally original character who looked like Avatar Roku and had complete mastery of the avatar state and had perfected every type of bending 😭💀 After a while one friend straight up told me I was dominating the role play and needed to be less OP Edit: I just remembered my character *also* knew karate 💀
I've had some similar experiences in Animal Jam... The first that come to mind are when I singlehandedly made everyone leave a roleplay by powerplaying and attacking everyone with 'gold beams', and when I tried to persuade someone to give me one of their masterpieces for free because I was 'queen of the night wolves', and promptly got kicked out of their shop.
GOD I REMEMBER WE DID THIS WHEN WE WERE YOUNGER. I played with one of my neighbors kid and their character always countered every attack with acidic piss.
I used to have a character named Charlie who (here's the quote from my journal) "was a normal girl. But she had a dark secret... she could raise the dead. And she had a scythe. And a cat boomerang." I kinda just got more unhinged as the page went on. 😅
i was so down bad for zuko i came up with a “love bender” so he would feel warm and fuzzy with me 😭 can’t even express how much this self-imposed trope haunted me in other series
*raises hand* Guilty. I was so ashamed of my mary-sue ridden past that I became one of those haters. Now I literally don't care, and I have embraced my old Sonic mary-sue. It's just way more fun that way!
the "going from having mary sue characters to hating them" pipeline thing is SO true. i'm glad u brought up the phase in 2016 where suddenly everything was being deemed "cringe" - i went from having a rainbow dash recolor oc named golden wings who was the fastest flyer in all of equestria to trashing every last bit of old art i could find. i think that era caused a lot of people to be ashamed and even scared about having ocs in case they were ridiculed
FR one of my biggest regrets in life is scribbling over my warrior cat oc, Oddstar's comic... i spent hours making it, only to deface it beyond recognition when I was going through my "anti cringe" phase.
@@gingaswagger7969 I DID THE SAME THING it got to the point where i soaked my marker drawings in water so that they were literally unrecognizable 😭 that era of the internet changed my way of thinking for the worst honestly i'm so glad i've learnt to keep my art and embrace what ppl deem to be cringe
When I was 12 I used the Mary Sue litmus test religiously and when I got into a fight with any of my friends I would take the test with one of their characters and try to see how many points I could rack up on them. I never told them the results I just would silently stew in my frustration.
Seeing all these Mary Sue memes just took me on a TRIP. I literally had the Mary Sue litmus test _bookmarked_ and hung religiously onto the "just b/c your character scored high, doesn't necessarily make them a Mary Sue" bullet point 😭
@@grazgrain oh I've tried taking it again a few years ago out of curiosity and characters I have now that I think are more well rounded and fun scored high. It's definitely not accurate and a product of its time.
OH MY GOD, YOU JUST REMINDED ME OF MY BATIM OC THAT WAS ESSENTIALLY BENDY 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO BUT GENDERBENT AND HIS SISTER AND CRAP. AND ALSO DATING BORIS FOR SOME REASON.
I remember making an alicorn OC. Her name was Atari and she was an absolute slayer at video games, but she focused so much on her gaming that she never learned magic. She literally can’t do anything except write poems and play video games. Her color pallet was rather normal, just black with a darker red and darker blue. I honestly don’t think she’s a Mary Sue, I just thought it’d be funny to have an alicorn that doesn’t know any magic at all.
I really apreciate that Izzy "isnt making fun of" the themes she talks about. Kids are just having fun and shaming them for liking that stuff even if it is cringe, makes them grow up really fast and fear being made fun of. Thanks Izzy
i think that's why izzy is one of my favourite channels. i know that they're not going to make fun of the things that they talk about, and that's pretty refreshing, at least to me.
I like how she approaches it as a healthy hobby and not doubling down like some “positive” takes go with encouraging obsession. Not just this just in general, Izzy has very grounded level headed takes that are just aging like fine wine.
@@SpadeBent the poking fun usually goes over the top. It's such a prominent trope because it's a beginner writing problem so it's young kids often getting the brunt of the teasing.
@@SpadeBent Not dumb, just inexperienced. You need analysing and practice to build any kind of skill. Most of your first attempts at anything aren't going to be the best you can do. Making fun of kids too much often discourages them from trying.
@@SpadeBent "Are you saying kids are dumb?" I mean, I thought I could walk on water like a pond skater when I was a kid. And I thought the sky was a dome like the one room from Spirited Away.
I remember I was so ashamed of having "mary sue" characters that I literally stopped creating original art for almost two years, and still don't share my original characters with actual stories with anyone but my closest friends because I really don't want to deal with characters that are very comforting for me being ruthlessly mocked
yep exactly exept it extended further to me, the fandom was just so toxic back then that I gave up on art as a career entirely, I still draw, paint, make clay sculptures, animate and all the fun art stuff but I just don't share it nor do I ever think I'll pursue it as a job, I keep it all to myself and barely even share it with my friends
i used to have a character called Willow who had black hair covering one eye with some burned off her head because she had uncontrollable fire powers. basically, she was so powerful that she had an outburst and accidentally burned her house down with her parents in it so she ran away to the forest and changed her name to the first tree she found. not really that "mary sue", just kid of bad and overused
As a 1970’s Star Trek fan fiction reader, you cannot fathom how common this trope was at the time. New Starfleet Academy graduate, youngest ever, highest accolades, gifted at everything and anything, loved by all, and oh my god the PLOT ARMOUR. They are invincible. It was really just in fandom until Luke Skywalker, the paramount of the Mary Sue.
I remember how I lost my mind when I found out what Mary Sues were in the sixth grade, I literally made all my OCs horrible just to avoid any of them being called Mary Sues 😭
Now that I’m older, I love Mary Sues, they’re often young people’s first foray into writing, it helps them learn to explore expressing themselves, and you get to be anything you want to be! That’s so cool! Who cares if it’s not pulitizer worthy? My friends and I had fun writing those characters and they have a soft spot in my heart 💕
yeah same LOL it’s sorta like a right-of-passage for kids getting into art and/or writing. cringey? yeah sure but as long as they’re having fun that’s all that matters ^^ eventually they’ll learn how to flesh out a character a bit more and make them more interesting and balanced but until then, i never want to discourage them from creating just because it’s “cringe”
@@ratboygirl kinda debatable. We can see from a lot of artists and writers post Mary Sue after very stringent block and harassment policies came into play, their work simply never improves or in some cases continually gets worse. Harassment is never ok but criticism isn't harassment and a lot of criticism has become impossible to give because it's labeled harassment.
@@MizutamariVT i never said anything about harrassment/criticism? but like i agree with you in a way. on the other hand tho unsolicited advice will not be taken regardless my comment was moreso targetted at those ppl who make "cringe compilations" and it's literally just a video of young people's art and stories. of course they're not gonna be good, they'll find out later lol. until then let them have fun
@@ratboygirl Never said you did mention harassment or criticism but I felt it was important to say I wasn't defending it since they was a sizable portion of the video and why critiquing it was bad.
I had a Sue for a while that I absolutely adored. He was a super famous singer that sang solely Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco, despite his story taking place in 1982. His name was Michael if I'm remembering correctly, and he frequently got possessed by some overpowered spirit during concerts that would go out of its way to attempt to murder everyone who attended. funny thing is, I never really let go of this character, and have put a massive amount of effort into un-sue-ifying him. It's not perfect yet, but there's definitely been improvement lmao.
@@chocobear4078 That’s a good idea! I think one of the reasons the original story kinda failed is because it took itself WAY too seriously. Maybe dark comedy would be more fitting!
My own Mary Sue was a yellow mlp alicorn named Blaze Apple who had an infinite lowing fire mane, was a vampire fruit bat, and had a crush on Flippy from happy tree friends for obvious reasons. She had red magic and was "stronger than all the rest." I'm glad I grew out of Sue characters because it allowed me to turn her from an all-powerful immortal murder vampire into a gay college jock vamp who was just good at playing guitar lmao
Idk, I think the worst part is that it never stopped--it just morphed into something else. There's so, so many young girls that are just NLOGing in other ways, or railroad what being girly or a girl means, or over-celebrating certain parts of it (incentivizing girls to pursue them over others), while ignoring NLOG came about because people obsessively categorize girls and women all the time, that certain girls that conformed were rewarded far more by society, and that in real life, our idea of what a girl or woman is (at least according to what's allowed to be warmly received celebrities and influensers), is very narrow. Age. Features (i.e., POC noses are still under-represented). Bodies (I'm skinny I have actually never seen anyone with my bone structure being a model before). Etc. What we actually celebrate tends to be narrow. Stuff like Tiktok isn't helping because its algorithm actually filters out certain kinds of "unconventional" features and basically promotes stereotypically hyper-feminine/conventionally youthful and beautiful features. While the people that get ahead that don't fit the usual binary usually are conventionally attractive in most other ways. So, almost everyone on certain platforms are conforming to actually extremely specific looks, but there is a tiny amount of hurrah for those that don't. The people curating themselves to be as marketable and consumable as possible are getting almost all the buzz. What gets the clicks will, overwhelmingly, inspire people the most to emulate while unknowingly creating a certain set of expectations around femininity in the greater culture (again annoyingly, but this stuff is ruthless). Beauty standards are, in fact, getting worse even when it other areas they have improved, and likewise, the issues that lead to NLOG becoming a thing are still around...and no it's not just beauty, I just brought it up because it is such a hotbed for a lot of the stress that contributes to someone wanting to NLOG or whatever.
@@_kirb_ you said it so well. The NLOG entire thing is steeped in misogyny and self-hatred by women and marketed to women. Of course it’s still around just in another way. And unfortunately most of the time those prescribed to that NLOG mindset aren’t getting made fun of for being cruel to other women, but more or less because it’s just another way to put women down. 😔
I really appreciated all the points you brought out in this video. 😭 Reality SUCKS as a teenager/tween. I see absolutely nothing wrong with projecting yourself onto an OC that lives in your favorite fictional world with characters you love and look up to. It brings so much comfort. When things get bad, you still have a daydream world to live in. The extreme stigma against Mary Sues (imo) is just the death of playful, inoffensive imagination. I'm in my middle teenage years, and still have self-insert characters even though they're very mellowed down to what I use to make. Create whatever OCs you want and have fun with them!!
I remember being dogpiled when i was, like, 10 by older teens and just actual grown-ass adults who were mad about my "Mary-Sues". It's so sad how kids like me, who were just trying to have fun and create something, were and still are treated. I never let it get to me but I know there's others like me who were discouraged from creating because people can't just let kids be kids =(
God, I hate it when people do that. Like, wow, you're better at writing nuanced characters than an elementary schooler who likes warrior cats. Congratulations.
The same thing happened to me and often continues to happen to me because of my cringe content on my channel (some very sad people on the internet go to my channel as they have no good argument points left :-( oh no ) I lived through the days of sans fangirls cringe comps and i often had people come to my pages on defunct art apps to tell me my ocs are bad and my art looks like shit ..so everytime i come across a young artist nowerdays i usually cheer them on and tell them exactly what i liked about their art, im sure y'all know they appreciate it :-) the next generation of artists needs love so that they dont turn out the same way me and a few of my friends did. Even if harassing a kid doesnt effect you it hurts them long term
I dont wanna say I "get" kids bullying eachother, but christ you'd think grown ass people would have something better to do than bully someones first writing project
I need a story where the whole main squad is a bunch of mary sues who got together to break the laws of the world and their interactions just have the vibe of like drunk girls complimenting each other in the bathroom. I so wanna see something sweet like that... Everyone hyping eachother up, teaching each other their universe shatering moves, borrowing clothes from one another because "no no, that skirt suits you sooo much better". It would feel like those old cringey rps with your online friends and I crave it...
There’s something truly endearing in my opinion about the fact that people who are now in their 50s, 60s, possibly even older were making these types of characters over half a century ago. It goes to show how similar we all are when it comes to certain things and how whilst so much has changed, nothing has changed at the same time. For all you know, the little old lady down the street who you talk to sometimes could have a lord of the rings Mary Sue oc that she made in her teens who is Legolas’ wife and who could take down dragons with her bare hands . We really are an incredible species.
Technically Dante's Inferno is the first fanfiction and the author literally inserts himself into the story, so this kind of thing has been going on for eons.
@@ranaevalentine9876 oh yeah... That book was a trip! I don't do drugs but it would be sooooo fun to read it to a bunch of baked people and just hearing their thoughts on it
It's funny to think that the modern concept of Mary Sue started out a Star Trek satire, but is now taken so seriously that it has reached total derision. A middle-aged Massachucetts man worked so hard on his young female OC for decades, based on a modern-day Joan of Arc, that he's convinced himself that Theresa is the farthest thing from a Mary Sue, when to every-one else...!
When I was younger, I had this oc that was a self insert and a total Mary Sue, like, she was rich, she was powerful and she could get anyone to fall in love with her. I used her in literally any fandom I could until I got really into cringe culture and locked her away forever in shame. Now I realize she truly is a girlboss and absolutely was the moment.
i'm into great eager to meet the new generation of poorly written cheap art filled with such characters just to turn average people into more escapist and limp mass. oh wait. we've already met it. it's called postmodern.
I grew up in a toxic household so having that comfort and expression in my mary-sue mlp oc's was empowering. It was easy to process the complex emotions that came with being a preteen in a dysfunctional household when you could just imagine those emotions in an edgy and dramatic backstory to this self insert. Not being held back by anything, character creation guides or even the lore of the universe, felt so comforting in a world where you don't have control over anything even yourself. I think every creative person needs at least one OC that they can go all out in, screw the guidelines and just make something that makes _you_ happy.
Yessss fandoms are for fans to have fun in. I never hated on the eye gouging designs because that was just someone having a good ol time. Now the “do not steal” and “you’re copying me!” Part of it was what was annoying since… you know… most of these characters were born of the same fandoms or ideas and not usually very creative in limitations or origins.
Rainbow Dash has an exact mathematical formula for calculting coolness objectively, it is soon to be submitted to the wider scientific community as a new fundemental force of the cosmos.
The only time a Mary Sue can be “harmful” in my opinion is if it is used in a roleplay to actively outclass/kill other peoples characters and derail the story. Otherwise go hog wild lol
Remembered being in a dnd server with someone with these sorts of characters.. The story was boring.. Some even "borrowing" already existing characters.. It was all "this is the princess/main person who are corrupted by darkness" The worse part? They went on and on on how great their writing is. Whenever people comments on it, they always.. ALWAYS try to dismiss it and "argue" with people
i don't know about you, but i think that professional screenwriter or published author shouldn't write a mary sue. otherwise why would i want to pay for the level of writing that i could found on any fan fiction website of my choosing made by a 13 y.o that in some cases actually have better writing for free?
@@koopie_koop Bad take. Doesn’t matter if they’re “professional” or “published”, it’s still their creative work, they’re free to create what they want. No one is forcing you to spend money on it.
mary sue is a paradox- seemingly "perfect" and "everyone loves them", yet, sometimes theyre despised for being so perfect, which makes them not perfect anymore
literally the most cathartic thing i ever did was sit down and force myself to write an extremely mary-sue oc. just hands down said to myself “idc if she’s cringy, she’s gonna be WHATEVER I WANT”. i’d been so traumatised by seeing ppl getting hunted for sport bc their characters were borderline interesting for a change that i realised i’d forgotten how to write anything actually engaging and fun. i still use that character from time to time, albeit a little more toned down, and she’s become a staple of the small group i share my writing with
I want to try this! Thank you for the inspo! I also have a lot of weird art trauma and it scared me out of a bunch of art forms that I want to reconnect with now
I have a character whos realistic but looks like a bit of a mary sue. White angel wings, literally a 3'6 axolotl god, based off of the blue axolotl from minecraft but is very feisty and can be irresponsible at times, and although they are a good fighter, their reflexes are absolutely horrible and theyre basically blind.
I mean one could argue that since the character was written with the tropes in mind and the writer make conscious decisions giving them those traits they are not really mary sue since they are written to actually fit the story and universe unlike the traditional world bending mary sue
The part near the end where you talked about how it’s ok to make art and have fun, man, that made me cry. It IS fun to make crazy overpowered characters and the fact that we’re made to feel like that fact is bad- it just sucks. Thank you so much for this video ❤️
i was obsessed with taking the mary sue litmus test as a kid and there was a “de-sueifer” question (that takes away from your score) that was something like “if your character is a hybrid creature, do they have the weaknesses of both species instead of the strengths?” i thought that was a super cool idea for an edgy anti-mary sue story. buuuuut of course i ended up making an edgy sue 😭
Having a blend of strengths and weaknesses is interesting and pretty realistic imo. Like, if your character is part bird or something, maybe their light weight allows them to fly but also leaves them prone to serious injury.
I've made several edgy mary sues in my childhood, and so seeing kids do the same makes me realize that mary sue ocs are just another step towards making great characters and stories. Essentially, if you're a young artist and/or writer, you have the power to do anything so make your edgy ocs with every elemental power and weird color schemes. You can make super complex new york times bestsellers later, just embrace what you have now, because your angel-demon-nekos are yours and yours only.
I think the whole Mary sue hate train completely destroyed a part of my creativity, making me terrified of being cringe and being obsessed with others approval that I couldn’t even make a backstory for ocs
no fr... like this vid is hilarious and im not mad at all but SO many of the things being made fun of are my characters exact traits and my feelings are hurt lmfao i cant help it its fun to have a quirky character
same,I have stopped drawing but if I do it again I should stop worrying about what others think as i always limited myself by that and it really is horrible, I think that's why I lost my taste for drawing as the comment above, i should embrace the cringe lol sorry if english is bad i used translation for some parts
my Mary Sue was a humanoid kitsune with nine tails, four wings and a scythe (of course) who could control black magic and turn into a fox whenever she wanted to. she had glowing teal hair and a glowing teal kimono. her name was Yumi and her personality traits included being overpowered, being quirky, impressing everyone around her and liking cookies (because she’s not like other girls, of course). edit: when someone takes her cookies, she becomes all black-and-red and starts levitating, because why wouldn’t she?
Man, the whole anti Mary Sue culture was so wild back in the day. I was totally one of those people who went down the "Mary Sues are a crime against humanity" pipeline. I don't think I was ever outright mean to anyone or gave unwelcome criticism, but I still feel bad about my behavior because at the end of the day, I was contributing to a culture that was surpressing the creative expression of kids.
People who were using the term "Mary Sue" to make fun of people just startin out writing or drawing were simply bullies at heart. If I still use the term, it's always in reference to, like, well-paid Hollywood scriptwriters making inauthentic, lazy characters when they know better. That's where the term belongs.
same here, we're talking circa 2000 when I was a very young adult thus "too old" and "too cool" for stinky Mary Sues! I followed LJs that roasted them, especially in the HP fandom. Even though there were rules about not harassing those people aka 'don't touch the poop' there's no doubt were hurt feelings and for what? For me to be like 'not like other girls' and feel superior? Joke's on me, turns out I was not a girl, I just didn't understand that at the time.
I was right with you! I remember making videos about it and I even was 'cancelled' once (it wasn't called cancelling, but obviously the original owners of the OCs found my channel). I just lied about my age and eventually privated the videos lmaooo
The biggest Sue I ever created was a Tokyo Mew Mew OC. She was an Amur Leopard girl named Cocoa with a white, “ripped-up wedding dress” costume, and everything I wrote her in got _super_ dark (repressed trauma go!) She was such a blatant self insert that she’d even moved to Tokyo from the UK 😭 I think her weapon was a violin crossbow that could create huge lightning strikes/booms from the music. The reason I made her is pretty wholesome though. An ad came on TV about how badly endangered these leopards were and little 9 year old me took it as my personal duty to spread as much awareness as possible.
Also, I’ve just remembered that she was the tsundere scientist’s childhood friend, but they reunited and fell in love as teenagers. LUCKILY that stayed a secret between me and Notepad bc I was too embarrassed to rp romance with other people, but _my god_ it haunts me 😭
One of my first ever oc’s was named Pyro. I made her when I was in fourth grade and if I remember correctly, she was basically a recolor of Chara from Undertale with a backstory of being a murderous demon wolf girl who was grown in a lab or something. It’s crazy how much I’ve grown as an artist and character creator over the years since I created Pyro and though I never knew what a Mary Sue was at the time that the oc was created, I think making chatacters like that is a universal experience for most artists or writers who started out young
Being 28 and watching this rly resurfaced so many memories and emotions. I used to make OCs which were basically self-inserts back in 2005-2012, then after I graduated high school I decided “f*ck it” and went full-throttle into self inserts and I haven’t looked back since then. So if anyone is reading this and feeling like you’ve missed your chance to make “cringy OCs/self inserts”, it is not too late at all! Please make anything and everything that makes you happy!! Adult life sucks and literally drawing my self inserts interacting w/ my fav characters (and shipping myself w/ a few of them who are appropriately aged for me) is prob one of the few things which make me feel pure, unbridled happiness and joy. Also!! You don’t need to create “well-written and thought out OCs/self-inserts” either. You can make stuff just cuz it makes you happy. You can make things just because you think a character is hot and you wanna create romantic interactions. There doesn’t have to be a “good reason” for them to exist. They can just exist.
Literally me lol. The only difference between my OCs now and my OCs back then is that they're older and might possibly follow the lore just a tiny bit more lmao.
Me personally can't write good stories to save my life. But it doesn't stop me from IMAGINING my OC constantly in my head for Lord knows how many years 😆! I know for a fact he was inspired by the Princess Ai manga series. And is probably a close clone of Princess Ai with some differences and is male instead. Again I don't write stories at all (though I want to 😭), but rather just imagine different OC's and they just living in my head rent free forever lol 😂😭.
@@TheMeloettaful Hey-- write bad stories. Seriously:D if you want to write, write! Imagine you have a hundred crap stories in the end of your fingers - you gotta type those out to get to the good ones. Writing bad stories is *awesome*. DO IT. I command you.
I have a sister who is quite a bit younger than me who is just getting into character creation. I absolutely refuse to use the term Mary Sue no matter how Sue-ish her characters may be. I think she needs encouragement, not put downs. Who knows, that character may be important to her and grow and change as she grows. I want my sister to have fun with her world building and if that means a horrible OP sparkle dog has to be the main character for a while, so be it. We all have that one OC that has been with us since the beginning and has developed over time.
honestly people care WAY TOO MUCH about the so-called 'quality' of others' work. you're doing an amazing thing; the beauty in art should be the passion and creativity someone feels, not their results, and it's so sweet that you're helping build confidence in and passion of writing with your sister!!!
I’ll admit..that’s true hell I STILL have the first two I made..one gone on to be my avatar and become the nickname for me via online friends but the best part is how I managed to make them go from how they were to how they are currently (example the first one ever having the typical playboy ideal…to now having that ideal out of personal issues and just simply needs someone to just remind himself that he has people that can hear him out)
My very first oc is a testimony to my hopes and dreams (before I even realized them) and longing, as well as very few of the things about me that have stayed consistent over the years. The consistency is a big thing because I grew up in a very unstable environment and I’ve gotten really fucked up from it and I don’t really know who I am, I don’t have a consistent sense of self if any at all, and it’s very troubling. For many years I only had them and my own imagination as an escape from the constant abuse I went through. They’re quite cringe and they started off as a self insert, but now they’re their own person (although there are still things about them that represent some of my thoughts and feelings ofc) and I’ve uhh dulled them down a little (they’re just not as over the top anymore and I fixed a few things for balance but they’re still incredibly op [but given they’re an old eldritch being I think that makes sense]), but they’re still pretty cringy. But that’s ok, I’m cringe too and I love them. They will always hold a special place in my heart, they were there for me since basically the beginning (I was super super young, like maybe 5-7 I think? Perhaps even younger but around that age I believe)
I definitely know I’ve had a character since I was about 4-5 years old, they were kind of just in my head doing all these different things and going on adventures. I remember I changed them up a bit after I discovered Undertale in 2017. I’ve developed them A LOT since then, I’ve changed their design quite a bit 3 times. I’m not even sure they’re the same character I had when I first made them, they do still look very faintly reminiscent of them though. I mentioned Undertale because I decided I loved it and the fandom enough that I wanted to dedicate them to it, I made multiple stories for them as they developed and I finally finished one that (I think) makes sense and fits in to the fandom and canon world of Undertale perfectly. Their name is Amethyst Zane and she is my profile picture :) I’ll be happy to share details about them if anyone wants to know anything, even stuff about _why_ I think they fit perfectly into the world of Undertale :D
fun fact: in seventh grade, one of my english assignments was writing a short story and sharing it to the class. my friends and i thought my immortal was so funny that i made a my immortal fic in the pov of draco getting attacked at the mcr concert. i shared it in front of the class and only my friend group found it funny. i got a low score lol
I hate when teachers low score creative writing assignments, especially ones that are younger, because it should just be about writing something fun that you enjoy
Bro you got to get creative on the writing assignment. One time I wrote a whole essay about a character breaking into a school to find the last clue to a scavenger hunt. I looked up prices for local soda shops in Utah so my character could do the math about how many slushies they could get with the prize money. ( also is that a Cleo pfp I see? )
Frankly the entire grade of a creative writing assignment should award any genuine attempt at expression a decent mark just for managing to try. High marks can be there for people who excel, but downgrading people for not being creative enough in a social milieu that punishes any form of earnestness is nonsense.
Honestly I’m of the opinion that “Mary Sues” are kind of a stage that every creative person goes through when first beginning to write characters. They’re not well-written by any stretch but they’re a first foray into character design and more broadly character creation for almost everyone. That said there’s nothing morally wrong with having them in your character arsenal- they can be fun- but I think the term in its ideal usage can be utilized to highlight a specific kind of writing issue for people who want to write compelling characters for an audience one day.
Don’t forgot the Mary Sue’s lecturing the whole cast for being ignorant and they all just stand there gaping in blank awe of her intelligence and morals
sometimes I see "horrendous and edgy backstory of infinite suffering" duct taped on as an after thought/defense, lol I did this but it didn't make it a better written character, because I had no clue what I was doing just "why should u listen to my character's insightful and intelligent monologues? BECAUSE THEY BEEN THROUGH CRAP AND IT WAS TERRIBLE, AND NOW THEY ARE STRONG AND EDGY DON'T ASK QUESTIONS"
"Mary Sue" hadn't cross-pollinated from criticism of fanfiction nearly as strongly at the time the term "sparkledogs" was coined. Plus the majority were canids.
I used to be so afraid of making Mary Sues that all my characters were kinda bland but now I have come full circle and make all the edgy and over the top ocs my middle school heart could only dream of.
My oldest oc started out as a Sonic fan character. Visually she was quite plain, the Sue-ness was in her significance to the Sonic universe and characters. She was the last iteration of the ultimate lifeform before Shadow, was best friends with Maria, and was ejected to Earth for being too much of a rebellious free-thinker. She could run almost as fast as Sonic, climb walls like Knuckles, and take an insane beating before tapping out of a fight. She was plucky and selfless but also got to be angsty over being an artificial lifeform and losing Maria. And of course, Shadow was SUPER into her and constantly picking a fight with and/or trying to seduce her, despite her having absolutely zero interest in anything to do with him.
i’ve always felt bad about enjoying stories with mary sue’s. but i’ve come to realize that i like to imagine myself as strong and beautiful. i’ve always relied on these types of characters to help me cope.
Aww, how much to remember! My Mary Sue was my anchor while being terribly bullied in middle school. It was a self related for an idiotic fan fiction I used to write while literally in class, it was my biggest escape from a very dark period that was happening in that moment and it helped to feel like I had a safe space. And at the time I didn’t even know what fanfics were, it just made sense to write one. My mother throw away all my three handwritten notebooks, cause she didn’t like what I was writing about, sometimes I think about it and it’s still so sad that she did that and I don’t have them anymore…
I dont know what's worse, your mom throwing them away, or that if i were your mom, id keep them to laugh (endearingly) at (I hope it would get to a point where we would appreciate/enjoy the teen cringe together).
Oh i can feel it, while struggling with depression at elementary School i did similar, but i drawn comics at night about my oc that was self insert but ideolized, she was baisicly cool Mary Sue with group of friends, lider that was strong, brave and Smart whitch i had non of
Well, my grandmother's name is Mary Sue and she actually WAS perfect. Her only known flaws, actually, were that she didn't have rainbow scene hair or date Gaara from Naruto. She made outstanding seasonal sugar cookies though. RIP, grandma, I miss you. You could have had it all if you had just invested in a bottle of Manic Panic 😔
When Izzy said "accidentally killed my parents as a child" I had to pause for a hot minute since one of my main characters, a 12 year old Japanese demon girl who can skip realities with a weird adoptive family, has that as her backstory- She also fits in with the edgy Mary Sue category... I'm never growing out of my childhood dreams at this point-
I was so adamantly against EVER writing a self insert as a young fanfic author because I not only thought I’d be mocked, but also because they genuinely made me uncomfortable to read. as an adult I see absolutely nothing wrong with writing yourself into a story, but as a young fanfic consumer, putting yourself into the canon was the quickest way to put me off a fic.
I fully agree there, if I'm going to read a fic I personally am looking to read about the characters already there. It's even hard for me to accept fics with ocs that aren't self-insert
yeah usually self insert is just a private thing, people hate it to this day, I particularly love it tho, feels cozy to have your persona or watch someone's persona have the oportunity to make friends with canon characters , I'm extremely lonely so I think about it everyday and do sketches, but people almost never see them, I post very little because I know people hate it and don't care, I barely finish anything tho, I still need to find myself a friend who shares the experience :,)
@@aikathedirtyrat3140 i didn't realize i was even doing it during childhood until i was introduced to the concept on the internet and now im an adult and still do that lmao definitely one of the healthier coping mechanisms i have. I feel you so dw while some might find it weird, i think it's a fun activity that can help you deal with loneliness and/or just for the sake of it :)
All my potential "Mary Sues" were suicidal, lonely and couldn't control their powers, often losing fights and friends. I feel like this says a lot about my mental state at the time.
I'm not even sure my main OC is a mary-sue or not and I'm worried for that. I feel like she maybe started off that way (cause I wrote her officially when I was 9) but as I got older I feel like she probably became less and less
My preteen writing of my character being called a Mary Sue because I literally made her like what I liked and apparently because I listen to rock music and my character liked it, it was an edgy Mary Sue
@@Notheare Had a friend named Luna in 4th grade. Not that odd of a name. (Though technically it was a nickname derived from her proper name which is Chinese, and I have forgotten.)
I had the idea for a “villain” OC that would intentionally be an edgy neon over-the-top Mary Sue and the way they’d be “defeated” is by erasing their over-the-top traits from a book where said traits are written. EDIT: To elaborate, the idea was that there would be this book that makes anything written in it become real, and some random average joe uses this book and writes so much ridiculous stuff that they become the aforementioned over-the-top villain OC.
There's an anime called Re:Creators which has a similar plot, where someone's ridiculously OP edgy OC that was popular online became real and gained more power each time someone created fanart or made a fanfic about her. It's pretty fun haha.
Having had the cringes for Mary-Sue characters as a teen, I can now say that they aren't terrible at all! Looking at it from a 30+ teachers perspective, they are great for kids to express themselves. A lot of kids do not feel important or like they have power at all, their Mary-Sues give them that feeling and that first look into what it could be like if you were the best at something (or everything, haha). It can be a coping mechanism or just expression of creativity, which seems puzzling given many of them have the same traits, but art welcomes learning from other people. Personally, I now feel terrible looking back at all the Mary-Sue hate and the guides telling you who your character can or can't be. It's like people were mad when somebody was trying to be special and to stand out, subconsciously they were trying to make characters fit this mold of being less extraordinary, more regular. I can see how this could really impact a childs or teens psyche, as they put themselves into their Mary-Sues. Kids are not trying to create a well-balanced character that needs to pass the "are they believable" check. Great video in dissecting the subject, this was quite nostalgic!
I keep reading about everyone's Mary Sou's and I really wish younger me would have went more ham on the whole trope. It seems like it was so fun and would have maybe helped little me's confidence. Maybe. I don't know but gosh these are all so amazing.
@@OseiBayard omg same! I deliberately tried to tone down most of my Fandom OCs and while some were related to MCs I tried, even when I was 12, to not Write a Mary Sue. Though I eventually compiled all of my OCs into a self insert that was Literally Me that was chosen to jump between worlds (the fandom properties I loved) and take on different forms (my characters) in each world so…. I think I eventually got there 😂
I remember making a character that was borderline “Mary Sue”, and watching your video made me realize why I made her. I was a new kid in middle school with new classmates when I first thought of her. I continued to play around with the character as a somewhat isolated high schooler, and then as a college student in a new city. There’s something comforting about making up a world and character that you can control. It’s like an imaginary friend, but for teens.
As a small kid I had a Mary Sue character called "Rainbow Regenbogen" (Regenbogen just means rainbow in german so she was called rainbow rainbow) who was a horse with blue fur and a rainbow hair, a horn and wings (no, she wasn't based on Rainbow Dash) and she was the guardian of her homeland and fought evil, was super nice and loved by everyone. I don't remember much of her but I do remember that she had no flaws 😂
I was so terrified of creating a Mary Sue during my whole life that my mind developed this little set of rules I automatically put in practice when creating ANY OC, basically the more powerful/ charismatic/ capable they are, the more horrendously bad things happen to them so they never get to be overpowered just sad (ex: oh this character is sooo pretty and nice and powerful everyone loves them, let’s make them kill their whole bloodline and carry with the unconscious guilt, unable to coexist with the thoughts of past and future making them uncapable of getting over things or think about the consequences of their actions). My therapist might say is a way of mirroring my own self sabotage onto my ocs but I call it character development :)
"This character is like me but she has wings and lightning powers, let's burn down her whole village and let her live with the assumption that her best friend died that day"
“This character is like me but he has a 2 robotic partners that give him the powers of flight,turning into a tank,and has insane sword skills. Too bad that because of his powers the villains found his school and almost killed his best friend and multiple students were killed,and he was tortured by the guy who made his robotic partners”
When I was in middle school, I had a character for a story I was writing who was named Maria Suzanne, and was literally a parody of Mary Sues. The running joke was the other characters hated her and repeatedly tried to kill her but she would always survive because she’s perfect. Looking back she’s one of my favorites
I made a Mary Sueh-ish character just to make her the dead elder sister of my main OC, so her perfectness was more of a twisted memory of a young grieving girl
tbh a good OC driving force, this kinda "you must be as perfect as your sister was" energy, but also since the character is dead, their "perfectness" may be plausible and just a glorified memory of a lost closed one
I made a Percy Jackson OC in 4th grade who was the son of Hades AND Hecate and was totally dragon themed, and was best friends with most of the crew at camp half-blood. Ten years later and I still regularly draw him. He has the exact same abilities and personality as he did back then, only I've refined him much more as a character. He is also one of my most liked and iconic characters amongst my friend groups. Moral of the story? Don't quit on what you think is cool cause someone told you not to!
So my main OC, Felix was a Mary Sue that adapted with the phases of my life. When I was in preschool, she was a fairy who could shape shift and take the place of existing characters with the hope to solve friendship problems. In Elementary, she was a Lava Girl with Clawdeen's color pallet, she retained the ability to travel between worlds, but she stayed herself, she was also a member of the Guardians from Rise of the guardians, her fairy past was brought up in the lore. In late elementary early middle school, she was a Ticci Toby rip off, still with those previously mentioned powers. In mid middle school, she finally had a different hair color, blonde, and was shy and never did anything. Late middle school, he came out as Trans and got some neat new powers, losing the shape shifting. Each iteration was faced with acknowledging the past parts of themself. I got very attached to Felix and wanted to figure out how to rewrite this self insert Mary Sue's self acceptance story as a real thing. I've now graduated high school and Felix has his own world built with it's own lore and characters. I didn't even hear the term Mary Sue until 3 years ago. I just always wanted to write this character in a way that made sense for a larger audience, without changing him too much. It's so crazy to think that this character started out as a comfort self insert Mary sue friendship fairy. The mind of a child is so beautiful. Myth of Friendship helped me get through the hardest years of my life, and now, with Felix, I get to share that with people, and maybe even help them, too.😊
That's really cool. My oldest character doesn't recognize her past iterations, but I'm slowly thinking of ways I can add them in her current version as references, since in an unexpected twist she actually became more and more Mary Sue-ish with time 😂
my OC Crystal has been with me for as long as i can remember and has only gotten worse with time every power in the universe has been given to her at one point and i have no intention of stopping
i agree that mary sue ocs are pretty much just harmless fun and a form of escapism for kids, and if it makes them happy, good for them. But I gotta admit, once they’re brought into a setting where people other than the creator has to deal with them, they can get really irritating. I’ve dealt with mary sue dnd characters, rp characters, and mary sues in collaborative writing projects and those sorts of characters are flat-out insufferable to work with when they aren’t actually your own character because they ruin the fun for everyone else by breaking the continuity of the world, immediately resolving every conflict, and just taking all the moments in the spotlight from other players/characters. To be fair though that’s kind of a completely separate problem
Also, when the Mary Sue OC moves from some DA roleplay account to a professionally published/broadcasted work 💀 somehow it’s even worse if they’re _not_ the main character and instead some side character who shows up halfway through the series to throw a wrench into everything.
Yeah, I remember trying out some fiction role playing in a forum online (around 2007 before social media took over the function of forums) when I was in my early teens and one girl had a Mary Sue character that immediately resolved every single conflict I tried to introduce. Every other participant in the forum got bored of it and quit, and I’m still annoyed at this random 12 year old girl to this day…
Mary Sou DnD types are so frustrating... A watched a whole dnd group dissolve after a boss fight when the Mary Sou player had a screaming match with the DM.
i think that observing mary sues on their own as harmless fun and then observing them SEPERATELY as a problem when it comes to joint projects are.... honestly, that's such a //mindblowingly// good take. That really explains the whole phenomenon very neatly. I applaud the critical thinking.
Feels weird seeing how creative, colourful, edgy peoples oc's were while I, as a kid, wrote about a mary sue scientist who saved lives with her medicines and dating her childhood crush. She also had a pet penguin because she went to Alaska (like that one big bang theory episode, cuz I liked the show) and found an eggs. She is a mery sue but definitely more tame, also, just realised I really liked researchers as a kid and now, as I recently got my zoology degree. Never really thought about it until now cuz I had other researchers/doctor oc's.
i used to have a may sue type chatacter, but don’t remember much about them since i never really drew them, but i adapted this character into my new sona which is cool
I went to an art day camp as a kid & part of that was a creative writing class. We did this exercise when I was like.. 11? Where we talked about naming characters and the idea was to write down a name and everyone would put the name in a hat and it would be picked randomly and the class would come up with a backstory for them. Again . I was 11. So I thought a perfect name for a sci-fi character would be “Warson Trek”… yeah. But unfortunately when my name was picked, the teacher wasn’t nice about it and decided to roast a Literal Child about how “fanfiction-y” the name was in front of the whole class. I used to wonder what the hell that lady’s damage was but this video has made me realize… it was this
@@loopd121 ikr? I had this archery counselor back in BSA, and he was just total, grade-A arsehole. Mind you, he was a 18-year-old life scout and I was but a wee cub scout. There wasn't really anything I knew about archery, and he basically ruined my archery experience. His companion counselor was much more chill tho, and at least didn't _totally_ ruin it for me (and everyone else). (I think he was having a shit day or sum. Couldn't blame him.)
I had a mary sue oc called Shadow (and sometimes Z) and she was the "Goddess of power" and she had every power ever, could kill god, married the devil, had thousands of forms, 60 kids, was 16 (😦), if you tried to hurt or kill her she'd take half your power or life, couldn't die from ANYTHING, was super rich, was so hot that every boy who saw her would instantly fall in love, every girl was jealous and hated her, and she was the best singer in the world and would enchant you with her songs
I think we ALL had a character like that. I think it’s apart of being a really insecure kid who wants to feel control of something you know? My Naruto OC Crimson was the same way xD
I used to have this one character called “Choco” She was mysterious, loved and great at everything, i dont much know how to describe her but i still find her important and am using her for one of my stories although her character has been changed a bit with personality and design, she’s also only a background character yet a great memory.
I was at an MLP convention a few months back, and there was a “worst OC contest” and the amount of Mary Sues we churned out was incredible. My Mary Sue of choice was Ravenwing Bloodmoon, son of Sombra, struggling with his dark and tragic past. Alicorn, naturally, glowing eyes, of course, the like
@@whateverxwhatever9064 it really was! Honestly, I really reccomend mlp conventions. I’ve been to a lot of non mlp cons, and I can say very confidently that the mlp con crowd is some of the nicest, most accepting people. Really lovely group :)
I made a Mary Sue character over ten years ago who's entire existence was for the sole purpose of making a Mary Sue. Most people that read about her actually ended up liking her because she was like the nicest person in the universe and her biggest character flaw was that she apologized too much. She was literally the epotime of the "I've only had Arlo for a day and a half, but if anything happened to him, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself" meme. She would legitimately forgive her own murderer and they'd probably off themselves of their own volition afterward just for ending her life. I brought her back as a life cleric in D&D years later. She was my Disney princess cleric. I still love her. Gwineere might be a Mary Sue, but she's _my_ Mary Sue, dammit.
Thank you for sharing this story, I love hearing other people's journeys with writing and how their creative process either differs or shares similarities. A lot of times with my own writing, I like to use archetypes as a scaffold to build my characters around. I pick a social or psychological concept as the basis for the character first, then go from there. This allows me to view the whole story as a bunch of gaps that need to be filled, so I can craft characters, settings, and events whose role is to fill this gap. Basically, I ask myself "What does the story need right now?" which is great when you are trying to get from point A to point B but have no idea how to get there. I created one character years ago who has essentially been in every story I've ever written because he exists to fill such a common gap!
I made a character like that, but for MLP. He was a "Shadow Alicorn" with a grey coat, a green mane and tail, and purple eyes. His special talent was shadow magic. He was also married to Derpy Hooves (a background character) and ran the local tavern, and firmly stayed out of any shenanigans and adventures because he enjoyed his nice peaceful life.
I’m traumatized by Mary-sue culture, I literally struggle making characters TO THIS DAY. I would/still hear voices basically brutally criticizing my characters and designs like a comment section on art forums (even if nobody was ever going to see the character) I was so terrified of being cancelled for having an overpowered character that I deprived myself creatively, even my husband used to say “you’ve given this character a cool ability but also several limitations and flaws because of that. so now it’s not fun for you anymore..”
@@enterurnamehere27 that’s a good point! I learned that when I became more experienced, having an overpowered character can be fun but not without some sort of opposition or limits.
@@enterurnamehere27 Exactly, it's fun to write scenarios for characters to work around these flaws without straight up rewriting their traits. This is why Mary Sues just sounds boring as hell.
@@GhostGayle i have an idea: give them unlimited power, but have them getting bored as the limit ("life's not exciting enough with things solved in 2 secs" etc.)
Something my brother told me and it kinda stayed with me is that growing, either in certain skills or just being more mature, isn't just being different from how you were. But also being able to look at those phases and laugh at them. Personally if I didn't have mary sue characters I probably wouldn't know anything about writing characters
this is such an amusing repeating pattern in human behavior. a lot of Ancient Chinese stories are just people writing mad fanfic, making all their favourite historical figures insanely powerful and successful.
when I was 12 (2016) I made a 280-picture comic using the pony creator game and free backgrounds. it’s still somewhere in the wild vk pony groups, uploaded from an account that I can’t access anymore because it’s deleted. i reread it every summer. it was never finished, but I decided to please my inner child by remaking it as a full-fledged comic. maybe it won’t happen this year or the next one, but one day I’m gonna call up my old childhood friend who supported me back then and show her that the story still lives.
Me and my friend had OCs of two girls that could turn into giant, magical and winged panthers. Theirs was black with blue feather tips and eyes and mine was white with pink. Their tails could turn into various weapons like a chainsaw. The title of our world (?) was "Super Panthers: Power Activated".
we NEED to normalize mary sues and gary sues again. i NEED to see a neon rainbow sparkly unicorn OC in the MLP universe. AND YES I WILL WORSHIP THOSE OC'S YOU CANNOT STOP ME
This may be my fave video yet. Seeing the OC's that kids make, fully unedited, and with their full chest, is just so delightful. Cringe is dead, let kids imagine themselves as the coolest, prettiest, most bad-ass version of themselves
I never had strong opinions about Mary Sues when I was a teen in fandom spaces, EXCEPT, when self-insert OCs were shipped with a character I considered myself married too. Which makes me think, it's probably not too far-fetched that virtual jealousy kind of played a role in the anti Mary Sue movement.
The jealous “not like other girls” mentality _definitely_ contributed 💀 some people hated any kind of pretty/beautiful OC. It probably triggered some people’s insecurities ig.
no because my main issue with that was always people who mischaracterized a character i like to be the bad guy who bullies their OC and then gets shunned once everyone else figures out theyre bullying the OC 😬 literally still hate that tbh
I remember having a self-insert sue in middle school who was a highly celebrated general, a dragon rider and a prettier version of me with elf ears. I kept this OC until I stumbled across various Livejournals, DeviantART and the infamous Mary Sue litmus test -- that's when I decided to give her this huge makeover and make her some swamp hag with exaggerated traits of everything I disliked about myself. I kept her in the back of my head for years, even playing her in a recent DnD campaign. I'm proud to say she came full circle with a pet pseudodragon and a pet griffin, owning a Rakshasa strip club and having 100+ hot tiger men husbands, and the ultimate character arc of fulling embracing her awkward self, her charm and most importantly her cringe.
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I wish you'd make video about Stardoll
Hi I really like ur makeup!
Would love a makeup tutorial✨️
Izzzyyyyyyyyy !!!!!!!!!
I could’ve used this a week ago! The case I ordered from there just came in yesterday T.T
I adore most Mary Sue designs tbh they’re such a look
I feel like they’ve aged charmingly
Agree agree
I TOUGH I WAS ALONE THANK YOU SO MUCH 🛐
Hmm you sure bout that
✨babies first sparkle dog✨
I know that this was only posted a few minutes ago but how doesn’t this have more likes? You’re one of the most famous youtubers in the art community!
oh my god i remember being TERRIFIED of “accidentally making a mary sue” so i literally spent hours researching how to make a “good oc” out of fear that i’d be made fun of
SAMEEEEE. It made me so critical of others’ characters as well. Nowadays I still have a bit of that cynicism, but I try to be healthy about it and not care about other characters. I’ve realized that I’ve come to enjoy Mary Sues and will defend them with my life
Same-,I made warrior cat ocs and worried of them being too overpowered and other stuff-
YOOOO SAME XD
This is why I don't make OCs
Same
I was afraid of giving my otherwise really bland fox character wings because I didn't want to make her a Mary sue
Wild time
I think the whole Mary Sue thing went from an earnest attempt at helping newbie writers avoid a common pitfall to bullying kids for not being immediately aware of said pitfall.
Yup. People will take any, ANY excuse to turn to bullying. Being discerning is much less glamorous
this is why I was never a fan of "cringe culture" becasue it just seemed like an excuse to make fun of kids being kids
And sadly the young fans who are aware of that become overly self-conscious about their original characters.
@@nakoruruwantspepsi1556 Not just kids but neurodivergent people. Cringe culture is just about bullying neurodivergent people, kids, and neurodivergent kids.
Agreed, and I think another part of it (At least for fancharacters and RP characters) is just the need for some rules or baseline. When you're RPing with others, or creating and sharing an fancharacter to interact with other fancharacters, it can be hard for everyone to get along and have fun if there's no clear baseline or rules to follow. And it can quickly spiral because of it. (To put it in simple terms, it's like if you're playing D&D. You don't want to be the Level 1 Wizard in a party where everyone else is Level 20 and ready to verse God himself while if you take one wrong move your character will drop dead from a simple gust of wind.)
And it's a baseline or at least understanding between players that's needed which the basic rules of RP etiquette don't exactly cover. I think in part the Anti-Mary Sue craze might have also been in part to try to make a steadfast baseline for everyone.
I work at a daycare and I'm happy to announce that even in this generation, playground roleplay mary sues still exist. There's this one kid that constantly heals everyone whenever they pretend to get hurt and always say things like "and I grow wolf ears and you're really shocked"
and I kid you not, one time they named themselves "Diamond Axe Wolf."
That's so cute I can't 😭
omg
has that kid ever drawn their Mary Sue oc?
drop the lore
We need Diamond Axe Wolf lore
i would be friends with that kid tbh they have a bright future
I love how the non Mary Sue character in that diagram had “clumsy” “can’t dance” and “bad at math” as character flaws as though those aren’t the most token ideas of flaws.
i remember seeing "clumsy" listed as a mary sue trait, because apparently it could easily be turned into a charming quirk (e.g. character is endearingly clumsy around their crush, but also a very skilled fighter). you just couldn't win.
Also, being exactly like Bella from Twilight doesn't make you a good character.
@@jessecaalvarez-kuykendall7071 To Be fair, she was Emotionally dead even before becoming Vampire.
She would be great at "try not to laugh" challenges, with her constant resting B*tch face.
as someone who is clumsy to the point of running into every wall in a 50 mile radius and therefore is too clumsy to dance without falling over, and is horrible at both math and geography to the point of calling geography "geometry", I'm extremely worried I will be called out for being the irl version of a mary sue
@@anarchistsnufkin534 As if clumsy people don't even exist... Am I a mary sue for this?
Wait, imagine a story where LITERALLY EVERYONE is a Mary Sue. Imagine how insane it would be. I kinda wanna write that just for laughs
do it and send the link here, that sounds amazing
Eyy that might be really interesting.. Plz share link if u write one
I love that kind of thing "if everyone is op then nobody is op"
That would be epic(ly ridiculous)! I would devour it.😄
Please do, I'd love to read something like that :D
It's cute how instead of finding OCs on DeviantArt to mock, you got your fans to submit their own. That's really wholesome.
I respect that greatly, ever since i was a young cringelet i have been living in fear of any accounts ive had being targeted by the good ol middle 2010s art rant/ cringe comp community
@@L0rdOfThePies CRINGELET
i agree, i loved it and it made me happy seeing what others created as a kid. very wholesome
@@L0rdOfThePies fucking CRINGELET i love this word, is goes into my vocabulary right this instant 😆
@Cinnamon Toothpaste On the one hand absolutely agree (thankfully I was mostly safe cause I don't think rp posting forums ever got big enough to get roasted publicly on youtube), on the other can we push for cringelet to be a thing now? Its too perfect.
Shout out to all the people brave enough to share their ancient ocs with the class, I would actually shrivel up into dust if someone saw all my made-up SCPs from late elementary school/early middle school😭
So like from 3 years ago?
god ik for sure get bullied like hell if any my classmates found out abt most of my ocs but im brave enough to share them here lol
SAME I ALSO HAD SCP OCS
Heaven forbid my elementary, middle school, and early high school ocs ever see the light of day ever again
those sound awesome haha
I love how fandoms go from "innocently making Mary sues" to "WE HATE MARY SUES!!" to "awww Mary sues are so nostalgic we love them"
Plot twist: I was a hater at some point, yet still clung to a rainbow gem connected to god powers. Yes, I made it up for my originalish world. I insisted I wasn't making Sues. I still was via that damned gem. They've since been reworked bc they genuinely didn't fit in a seriously written narrative I was weaving for a world, but I find it funny that my little bit of hypocrisy came in the form of a classic Sue trope.
@@wolfynerd14
Honestly I just make Mary sues for fun now but I used to be so scared of making my character too perfect that I gave them so many flaws that they were just miserable- 💀
@@Mumther_Flame This entire video makes me want to resurrect the old Sue version of a character I made when I was 8 for the lolz too. It just looks like it'd be fun and also test my artistic skill considerably, since I definitely need practice in color studies (ie color shading and digital rendering).
@@wolfynerd14
That would be so cool lol you totally should :)
"Wait, there all Mary Sues?"
"Always have been."
I remember the exact moment I stopped taking accusation of "this character is a Mary Sue" seriously. It was when, back when I wrote fanfiction, one of my stories had a part where a mailman delivers a letter.... the mailman was not even really a named character and he disappears from the story after delivering that one letter.... and yet, just because he wasn't a named character from the source material, I suddenly was hearing cries that he was a Mary Sue self insert.
I wish I was joking.
f
mailman sue 😔💔
Istg sometimes I lose braincells because of these kinds of ppl 😃🔫
Of course people thought it was a self insert, who doesn’t want to be a mail man!
In all honesty though I understand that, as a fanfic writer I never put any characters that wasn’t in the source material in my fic for fear that something like that would happen, over time I started to care less, but like it’s just weird that people care so much? And will try to call out and make fun of the littlest things.
@@lilwoofs Yeah, honestly as I got older I started to feel like fanfic writing as a whole was.... well, people always say its good training for being a real writer.... but the problem is, I feel like it imparts all the wrong lessons, because fandoms have fundamentally different desires and expectations than, say, a guy picking up a random book off a shelf might.
As such, a lot of the lessons you learn from writing fanfiction are basically not usable in a non-fanfiction context, and in fact can trap you.
Someone once mentioned Mary Sues are an answer from kids who were bullied into believing they couldn't do anything and so they made characters that could do anything. Been kinda hard to hate on Mary Sues ever since I read that, it's just a way for traumatized kids to cope and dream.
Agreed, at this point I make characters for myself not for others to judge on.
I don't know about the whole Traumatized kid thing, but most OCs are cringe by default and that's ok.
@@thanatoast most fun things are cringy anyway so have fun, plus your happiness should be worth more than the approval of others.
Nah, I made Gary Stus and wasn't traumatised. Do not worry about laughing at mary sues, just don't be mean about it.
when they get bullied even more for their terrible oc
As someone who has fully embraced my cringe and loves looking back on my old "mary-sues" from when I was a kid, I love seeing other people's old Mary Sues or Gary Stus! When my little brother and sister make their first Mary Sue, or Gary Stu, or Sparkle Dog, I cant wait to see it and encourage them to keep drawing and creating! Nothing as amazing as seeing baby's first self insert OC.
I helped my 2 neices make ocs and one was aculy prety cool with a mostly normal grey wolf, with a sort of neclace witch if i remember right had a paw shape and blue right back leg the other one was partecly just bunch of random colors and their both 6
My brother made a mary sue/gary stu named Rain Whale who can one shot every ocean creature with a rainbow beam, it has 5 dorsal fins and it can fly. He is going to kindergarten, Im so proud of him :)
Mary sues hits different when you were new to the writing scene
As a kid on the internet I became so afraid of accidentally making Mary Sue OCs (I had received horrible comments, been harassed, reposted on "cringe oc" blogs, etc) that I started looking at those "How to not make your OC a Mary Sue" guides, which led me to read more about character design, which led me to watch chara design courses on TH-cam, which eventually... led me to become absolutely IN LOVE with character designing and concept art. I'm a professional character designer now, haha.
Oh my goodness this is me too!!! I love character design so much and my favorite thing to do is help other people flesh out characters and stuff! Usually by just spitballing ideas at them and letting them pick if they thing they're cool ideas for their characters or not (I play a lot of d&d and sometimes am DM). My dream is to be a professional character designer for animation and stuff. Not sure if it'll happen but a man can dream.
Who knew that childhood cyberbullying and trauma was the perfect recipe to become a professional character designer lmao
TELL THE PEOPLE WHO HARASSED YOU SO THEY CAN FEEL EMBARRASSED
Hahaha, me too! I'm a designer because I was so afraid to make these types of characters, and I was into D&D a lot so I was always making characters all the time. It revealed to be one of my passions
same here except i write now lol
as someone who’s first oc was “waffles the eevee, a lol random all powerful being married to alter cipher, bill cipher’s tsundere twin brother who could transform into an alicorn”, mary sues have been a prominent part of my artistic development lmao. really enjoyed this video
I'm sorry but the thought of bill cipher having a tsundere twin brother made me laugh so hard 😭
Bro just swapped TV shows like 3 times 💀
the ultimate crossover
TSUNDERE HAHAHA
tsundere twin brother, and to bill?!?!?! XD
Oh man! My mom was the best when it came to My Little Pony OC’s. All of my siblings liked to draw, including me, so my mom took our OC’s and turned them into stuffed animals! They were so beautiful and I loved them so much
I wish I had a mom like yours, hell it so much fun making characters and it can be a form of bonding between me and my mom 😭😭.
That’s so cute!
Thats a Cute mother and children bond😊
I NEED to do this wiht my old MLP OC holy shit-
Broooo please what's your mom's rate per plushie? I'd like to commission.
For some reason, I actually kinda like how bright and chaotic Mary sues designs are. It’s extreme randomness has some sorta weird ass charm to me, even though I’m trying to learn how to animate :,)
I swear all OC creators go through this same pipeline. Making mary sues, to hating them/being scared of creating them, to being chill with them and finding them cute/cool as the fun self-insert wish fulfillment they actually are. That's growth.
@@vitaminwater9662 They were
Im in this comment and I don’t like it.
Tho but fr you go from basically making yourself a self insert power fantasy, to making essentially a depressed version of yourself, and then you shift back to just, doing whatever you want without caring.
lol
I went from a Fox anthro me character who could shapeshift, to a dude wearing a porcelain madi gras mask and basically just being me but with thirteen “he’s sad”, to just being “hey, its my self insert/avatar, i draw myself as a dude with tree branches as antlers… I may be cringe, but I am free.”
@@jamzee_ for me these days it tends to vary depending on whether something’s just for me or for general consumption, too.
Virtually everything I watch/read I’ll have my own self-insert that only exists within my own mind. I never write fanfic, it’s all just a series of daydreams, but they’re self-insert OCs nonetheless, and they’re all the most wish-fulfilly, cringey, Mary Sue-enest things to have ever been dreamt up. And that’s fine, because I’m never going to subject any innocent bystanders to them; in the safety of my own mind, I can be as cringe as I care to be.
When it comes to writing content I actually want people to engage with, however, I try to make everyone a little more rounded lmao
@@jamzee_ PREACH
Yes 👍🏼 loving it 😊
I vividly remember being in the my little pony fandom on good ol deviantart back when it was popular and there was this 14 year old girl who had a "mary sue" mlp oc and she got so much backlash for it she kept redesigning her oc to make her less of a mary sue but people were never satisfied. i think she ended up putting her up as an adoptable and the person who got it said they were gonna redesign her completely. kinda messed up looking back on it.
The true people who are cringe are those who make fun of others for being "cringe".
@@spoopyvirgil4944 oh totally. especially when they're making fun of literal children having fun
People just want to be bully children 😔
That definitely sucks that she couldn't have her fun :( i remember vividly watching "how to make a good oc" videos because of how scared i was on making a Mary sue
I REMEMBER THIS! I always thought it was sad :(
all my childhood ocs were 100% Mary Sues. Everytime id roleplay w/ my cousins and siblings I’d always say shit like “He can actually read ur mind um so he dodged.” It was EMBARRASSING and they never wanted to play w me 😭💀
You just unlocked a childhood memory in me! One time as a little kid I was roleplaying with my friends, and we all played as different characters from shows and stuff. I was a totally original character who looked like Avatar Roku and had complete mastery of the avatar state and had perfected every type of bending 😭💀 After a while one friend straight up told me I was dominating the role play and needed to be less OP
Edit: I just remembered my character *also* knew karate 💀
I've had some similar experiences in Animal Jam... The first that come to mind are when I singlehandedly made everyone leave a roleplay by powerplaying and attacking everyone with 'gold beams', and when I tried to persuade someone to give me one of their masterpieces for free because I was 'queen of the night wolves', and promptly got kicked out of their shop.
GOD I REMEMBER WE DID THIS WHEN WE WERE YOUNGER.
I played with one of my neighbors kid and their character always countered every attack with acidic piss.
@@ineedzemedic5810 ok that's just funny
@@ineedzemedic5810 HELP WHAT?? That’s hilarious oh my god
I used to have a character named Charlie who (here's the quote from my journal) "was a normal girl. But she had a dark secret... she could raise the dead. And she had a scythe. And a cat boomerang." I kinda just got more unhinged as the page went on. 😅
Everybody gangsta til Charlie pulls out the cat boomerang 😤
Charlie out here killing more pets than PETA
Shout out to all the Charlie's out there.
when you said cat boomerang i thought of like
a taxidermied cat in the shape of a boomerang
I need to hear the rest of it STAT
i was so down bad for zuko i came up with a “love bender” so he would feel warm and fuzzy with me 😭 can’t even express how much this self-imposed trope haunted me in other series
Honestly that's both hilarious and adorable.
That is the best thing I've seen lmao. I love people sharing their cringe OCs and I'm glad this was my childhood
I can’t get over this concept 😂😂😂
“Lovebending” sounds both hilarious and creepy 😭💀 this comment gave me a good laugh thank you OP
@@anerrorhasoccurred8727 pls that's so true-
I always thought Mary Sue was a actual character that people bullied as a sick sense of humor for the majority of my life.
I though she was a character from a book lol.
@⋆Grimikuu⋆ Idek, I saw the “fatui harbringers” thing I was so confused 👍
@⋆Grimikuu⋆ Fancy seeing you here Grimi. Didn't know you also watch Izzy
You're actually semi-correct, as the term originated from name of the protagonist of a Star Trek fanfiction.
I specifically thought she was a character from some 19th century feminist novel. I don't remember why.
*raises hand* Guilty. I was so ashamed of my mary-sue ridden past that I became one of those haters.
Now I literally don't care, and I have embraced my old Sonic mary-sue. It's just way more fun that way!
haha Love SNT!
💀 i had one and I am dead As a kid they had so many Braclets And there name was prob Mabel or
Susan i hate little me :)
@@LpsBagelSisters same lol
Your sonic oc looks awesome though!
I remember SNT! I loved all your SNT videos when I was little!
19:37 really is just “It’s too late twilight! I’ve drawn you as the soy jack and me as the chad Alicorn!”
Soylight Sparjak
the "going from having mary sue characters to hating them" pipeline thing is SO true. i'm glad u brought up the phase in 2016 where suddenly everything was being deemed "cringe" - i went from having a rainbow dash recolor oc named golden wings who was the fastest flyer in all of equestria to trashing every last bit of old art i could find. i think that era caused a lot of people to be ashamed and even scared about having ocs in case they were ridiculed
almost everyone’s gonna have a Mary Sue or self insert the important thing is that shit never gets professionally published
FR one of my biggest regrets in life is scribbling over my warrior cat oc, Oddstar's comic... i spent hours making it, only to deface it beyond recognition when I was going through my "anti cringe" phase.
@@gingaswagger7969 I DID THE SAME THING it got to the point where i soaked my marker drawings in water so that they were literally unrecognizable 😭 that era of the internet changed my way of thinking for the worst honestly i'm so glad i've learnt to keep my art and embrace what ppl deem to be cringe
Were you even a part of mid-00s fandom culture if you didn't go through the 'Mary Sue to Anti Sue Pipeline'?
2016 damaged too many people.
When I was 12 I used the Mary Sue litmus test religiously and when I got into a fight with any of my friends I would take the test with one of their characters and try to see how many points I could rack up on them. I never told them the results I just would silently stew in my frustration.
Seeing all these Mary Sue memes just took me on a TRIP. I literally had the Mary Sue litmus test _bookmarked_ and hung religiously onto the "just b/c your character scored high, doesn't necessarily make them a Mary Sue" bullet point 😭
Oh my gosh that is so funny
It’s not even accurate tho like literally all my characters get over the threshold on that and they’re the most flawed beings to exist 😭😭
@@grazgrain oh I've tried taking it again a few years ago out of curiosity and characters I have now that I think are more well rounded and fun scored high. It's definitely not accurate and a product of its time.
@@renhyde1447 yeah, the creator said that they think it's innacurate now
Don’t forget those characters who would have an “evil side”. I remember making copious amounts of half-good half-evil OC fanart.
No because I did this too- I had a speedart on my channel of my edgy sad persona with an inverted colors half 😋
I think I had one that was possessed by the spirit of a vampire that would be brought out by the super hot villain OC. Man good times.
OH MY GOD, YOU JUST REMINDED ME OF MY BATIM OC THAT WAS ESSENTIALLY BENDY 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO BUT GENDERBENT AND HIS SISTER AND CRAP. AND ALSO DATING BORIS FOR SOME REASON.
omg the art where its a character split and one side of them is happy and the other side is bloody and evil. those were the best i swear
I still do this lmao.
I remember making an alicorn OC. Her name was Atari and she was an absolute slayer at video games, but she focused so much on her gaming that she never learned magic. She literally can’t do anything except write poems and play video games. Her color pallet was rather normal, just black with a darker red and darker blue. I honestly don’t think she’s a Mary Sue, I just thought it’d be funny to have an alicorn that doesn’t know any magic at all.
That’s pretty slay tbh I like the idea of her being such a gamer that she doesn’t even learn magic lol
I really apreciate that Izzy "isnt making fun of" the themes she talks about. Kids are just having fun and shaming them for liking that stuff even if it is cringe, makes them grow up really fast and fear being made fun of. Thanks Izzy
i think that's why izzy is one of my favourite channels. i know that they're not going to make fun of the things that they talk about, and that's pretty refreshing, at least to me.
I like how she approaches it as a healthy hobby and not doubling down like some “positive” takes go with encouraging obsession. Not just this just in general, Izzy has very grounded level headed takes that are just aging like fine wine.
@@SpadeBent the poking fun usually goes over the top. It's such a prominent trope because it's a beginner writing problem so it's young kids often getting the brunt of the teasing.
@@SpadeBent Not dumb, just inexperienced. You need analysing and practice to build any kind of skill. Most of your first attempts at anything aren't going to be the best you can do.
Making fun of kids too much often discourages them from trying.
@@SpadeBent "Are you saying kids are dumb?" I mean, I thought I could walk on water like a pond skater when I was a kid. And I thought the sky was a dome like the one room from Spirited Away.
I remember I was so ashamed of having "mary sue" characters that I literally stopped creating original art for almost two years, and still don't share my original characters with actual stories with anyone but my closest friends because I really don't want to deal with characters that are very comforting for me being ruthlessly mocked
Same, I have only one or two original characters that I am just too afraid to share because they are very personal and comforting to me.
Same here quq
yep exactly exept it extended further to me, the fandom was just so toxic back then that I gave up on art as a career entirely, I still draw, paint, make clay sculptures, animate and all the fun art stuff but I just don't share it nor do I ever think I'll pursue it as a job, I keep it all to myself and barely even share it with my friends
@@Someone-kf8xe That's sad, I wish you were able to comfortably share it somewhere
i used to have a character called Willow who had black hair covering one eye with some burned off her head because she had uncontrollable fire powers. basically, she was so powerful that she had an outburst and accidentally burned her house down with her parents in it so she ran away to the forest and changed her name to the first tree she found. not really that "mary sue", just kid of bad and overused
That’s a incredible Mary Sue oc
Workable tbh
@@spinningindaffodilspossibly i guess but i hate her too much for that lol
@@spinningindaffodils SID PFP????
shes so real for that
As a 1970’s Star Trek fan fiction reader, you cannot fathom how common this trope was at the time. New Starfleet Academy graduate, youngest ever, highest accolades, gifted at everything and anything, loved by all, and oh my god the PLOT ARMOUR. They are invincible. It was really just in fandom until Luke Skywalker, the paramount of the Mary Sue.
I remember how I lost my mind when I found out what Mary Sues were in the sixth grade, I literally made all my OCs horrible just to avoid any of them being called Mary Sues 😭
In hindsight, Mary Sue hate was kinda just adults bullying children online into suppressing their imagination.
@@ShallowVA omg fr
Mission failed successfully
Yeah i tried to remove any ounce of personality from my ocs as a kid lol, they were like cardboard boxes with anime eyes at that point
@@ShallowVA Yup.
And if anyone's actually cringe, it's those adults and teens who decided making fun of kids having fun is a worthwhile endeavor lol.
Now that I’m older, I love Mary Sues, they’re often young people’s first foray into writing, it helps them learn to explore expressing themselves, and you get to be anything you want to be! That’s so cool! Who cares if it’s not pulitizer worthy? My friends and I had fun writing those characters and they have a soft spot in my heart 💕
yeah same LOL it’s sorta like a right-of-passage for kids getting into art and/or writing. cringey? yeah sure but as long as they’re having fun that’s all that matters ^^
eventually they’ll learn how to flesh out a character a bit more and make them more interesting and balanced but until then, i never want to discourage them from creating just because it’s “cringe”
@@ratboygirl kinda debatable. We can see from a lot of artists and writers post Mary Sue after very stringent block and harassment policies came into play, their work simply never improves or in some cases continually gets worse.
Harassment is never ok but criticism isn't harassment and a lot of criticism has become impossible to give because it's labeled harassment.
@@MizutamariVT i never said anything about harrassment/criticism? but like i agree with you in a way. on the other hand tho unsolicited advice will not be taken regardless
my comment was moreso targetted at those ppl who make "cringe compilations" and it's literally just a video of young people's art and stories. of course they're not gonna be good, they'll find out later lol. until then let them have fun
@@ratboygirl Never said you did mention harassment or criticism but I felt it was important to say I wasn't defending it since they was a sizable portion of the video and why critiquing it was bad.
@@MizutamariVT sorry friend i don’t do well with tone over text :)
I had a Sue for a while that I absolutely adored. He was a super famous singer that sang solely Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco, despite his story taking place in 1982. His name was Michael if I'm remembering correctly, and he frequently got possessed by some overpowered spirit during concerts that would go out of its way to attempt to murder everyone who attended. funny thing is, I never really let go of this character, and have put a massive amount of effort into un-sue-ifying him. It's not perfect yet, but there's definitely been improvement lmao.
Ahhhhh I love it!!
Honestly, the idea of a famous singer being constantly possessed by a murderous spirit is hilarious to me. It could work as a comedy.
There IS SUCH A FUN STORY HERE I see why you've held on to him
@@chocobear4078 That’s a good idea! I think one of the reasons the original story kinda failed is because it took itself WAY too seriously. Maybe dark comedy would be more fitting!
Already love the description, it's a very good setup for a fun dynamic between Micheal and his "spirit".
My own Mary Sue was a yellow mlp alicorn named Blaze Apple who had an infinite lowing fire mane, was a vampire fruit bat, and had a crush on Flippy from happy tree friends for obvious reasons. She had red magic and was "stronger than all the rest." I'm glad I grew out of Sue characters because it allowed me to turn her from an all-powerful immortal murder vampire into a gay college jock vamp who was just good at playing guitar lmao
From My Little Pony to Marceline
Oh please tell me about the gay college jock vamp!
The “I’m not like other girls” 2010’s era truly brought out the WORST in all of us 💔
Oof, indeed...though we had a version in the early 2000's, too. I'm embarrassed by my former Emo self, but at least it wasn't full-blown lol.
This makes me want to write a character who's essence is "I'm not like other girls I'm __worse__"
I was part of the early 2000s set.
Idk, I think the worst part is that it never stopped--it just morphed into something else. There's so, so many young girls that are just NLOGing in other ways, or railroad what being girly or a girl means, or over-celebrating certain parts of it (incentivizing girls to pursue them over others), while ignoring NLOG came about because people obsessively categorize girls and women all the time, that certain girls that conformed were rewarded far more by society, and that in real life, our idea of what a girl or woman is (at least according to what's allowed to be warmly received celebrities and influensers), is very narrow. Age. Features (i.e., POC noses are still under-represented). Bodies (I'm skinny I have actually never seen anyone with my bone structure being a model before). Etc.
What we actually celebrate tends to be narrow. Stuff like Tiktok isn't helping because its algorithm actually filters out certain kinds of "unconventional" features and basically promotes stereotypically hyper-feminine/conventionally youthful and beautiful features.
While the people that get ahead that don't fit the usual binary usually are conventionally attractive in most other ways. So, almost everyone on certain platforms are conforming to actually extremely specific looks, but there is a tiny amount of hurrah for those that don't.
The people curating themselves to be as marketable and consumable as possible are getting almost all the buzz. What gets the clicks will, overwhelmingly, inspire people the most to emulate while unknowingly creating a certain set of expectations around femininity in the greater culture (again annoyingly, but this stuff is ruthless).
Beauty standards are, in fact, getting worse even when it other areas they have improved, and likewise, the issues that lead to NLOG becoming a thing are still around...and no it's not just beauty, I just brought it up because it is such a hotbed for a lot of the stress that contributes to someone wanting to NLOG or whatever.
@@_kirb_ you said it so well. The NLOG entire thing is steeped in misogyny and self-hatred by women and marketed to women. Of course it’s still around just in another way. And unfortunately most of the time those prescribed to that NLOG mindset aren’t getting made fun of for being cruel to other women, but more or less because it’s just another way to put women down. 😔
I really appreciated all the points you brought out in this video. 😭 Reality SUCKS as a teenager/tween. I see absolutely nothing wrong with projecting yourself onto an OC that lives in your favorite fictional world with characters you love and look up to. It brings so much comfort. When things get bad, you still have a daydream world to live in. The extreme stigma against Mary Sues (imo) is just the death of playful, inoffensive imagination. I'm in my middle teenage years, and still have self-insert characters even though they're very mellowed down to what I use to make. Create whatever OCs you want and have fun with them!!
No I will not
@@turtleboy1188 devastating news, we will never recover
@@turtleboy1188 okay?good for you?we don't give a f
ddwdw th-cam.com/video/MI3SOOOcoy4/w-d-xo.html
@@choicethetaurus as much as i dont like self promotion this the only time ill accept it cuz this song goes
I remember being dogpiled when i was, like, 10 by older teens and just actual grown-ass adults who were mad about my "Mary-Sues". It's so sad how kids like me, who were just trying to have fun and create something, were and still are treated. I never let it get to me but I know there's others like me who were discouraged from creating because people can't just let kids be kids =(
I faced the exact same issue but I was 12. It’s easy to be brutal when you can hide behind a screen.
God, I hate it when people do that.
Like, wow, you're better at writing nuanced characters than an elementary schooler who likes warrior cats. Congratulations.
The same thing happened to me and often continues to happen to me because of my cringe content on my channel (some very sad people on the internet go to my channel as they have no good argument points left :-( oh no )
I lived through the days of sans fangirls cringe comps and i often had people come to my pages on defunct art apps to tell me my ocs are bad and my art looks like shit
..so everytime i come across a young artist nowerdays i usually cheer them on and tell them exactly what i liked about their art, im sure y'all know they appreciate it :-) the next generation of artists needs love so that they dont turn out the same way me and a few of my friends did. Even if harassing a kid doesnt effect you it hurts them long term
Holy shit, I hope ur ok
I dont wanna say I "get" kids bullying eachother, but christ you'd think grown ass people would have something better to do than bully someones first writing project
I need a story where the whole main squad is a bunch of mary sues who got together to break the laws of the world and their interactions just have the vibe of like drunk girls complimenting each other in the bathroom. I so wanna see something sweet like that... Everyone hyping eachother up, teaching each other their universe shatering moves, borrowing clothes from one another because "no no, that skirt suits you sooo much better". It would feel like those old cringey rps with your online friends and I crave it...
There’s something truly endearing in my opinion about the fact that people who are now in their 50s, 60s, possibly even older were making these types of characters over half a century ago. It goes to show how similar we all are when it comes to certain things and how whilst so much has changed, nothing has changed at the same time. For all you know, the little old lady down the street who you talk to sometimes could have a lord of the rings Mary Sue oc that she made in her teens who is Legolas’ wife and who could take down dragons with her bare hands . We really are an incredible species.
Technically Dante's Inferno is the first fanfiction and the author literally inserts himself into the story, so this kind of thing has been going on for eons.
@@ranaevalentine9876 oh yeah... That book was a trip! I don't do drugs but it would be sooooo fun to read it to a bunch of baked people and just hearing their thoughts on it
It's funny to think that the modern concept of Mary Sue started out a Star Trek satire, but is now taken so seriously that it has reached total derision.
A middle-aged Massachucetts man worked so hard on his young female OC for decades, based on a modern-day Joan of Arc, that he's convinced himself that Theresa is the farthest thing from a Mary Sue, when to every-one else...!
@@ranaevalentine9876 even further back, the Aeneid is basically an Iliad/Odyssey fanfic where the Trojans are the heroes.
@@nondescriptcat5620 So an Achaean-bashing fic?
When I was younger, I had this oc that was a self insert and a total Mary Sue, like, she was rich, she was powerful and she could get anyone to fall in love with her. I used her in literally any fandom I could until I got really into cringe culture and locked her away forever in shame. Now I realize she truly is a girlboss and absolutely was the moment.
Lowkey she sounds like an icon 😂
i'm into great eager to meet the new generation of poorly written cheap art filled with such characters just to turn average people into more escapist and limp mass. oh wait. we've already met it. it's called postmodern.
totally same lol
I remember not having an OC when I was young so what did I do?, I used a poorly drawn SpongeBob as my mascot lmao
I grew up in a toxic household so having that comfort and expression in my mary-sue mlp oc's was empowering. It was easy to process the complex emotions that came with being a preteen in a dysfunctional household when you could just imagine those emotions in an edgy and dramatic backstory to this self insert. Not being held back by anything, character creation guides or even the lore of the universe, felt so comforting in a world where you don't have control over anything even yourself. I think every creative person needs at least one OC that they can go all out in, screw the guidelines and just make something that makes _you_ happy.
Yessss fandoms are for fans to have fun in. I never hated on the eye gouging designs because that was just someone having a good ol time. Now the “do not steal” and “you’re copying me!” Part of it was what was annoying since… you know… most of these characters were born of the same fandoms or ideas and not usually very creative in limitations or origins.
29:09 i cannot get over rainbow dash saying “So cool!!! Maybe even 20% cooler than me!”
Rainbow Dash has an exact mathematical formula for calculting coolness objectively, it is soon to be submitted to the wider scientific community as a new fundemental force of the cosmos.
The only time a Mary Sue can be “harmful” in my opinion is if it is used in a roleplay to actively outclass/kill other peoples characters and derail the story. Otherwise go hog wild lol
Remembered being in a dnd server with someone with these sorts of characters.. The story was boring.. Some even "borrowing" already existing characters.. It was all "this is the princess/main person who are corrupted by darkness"
The worse part? They went on and on on how great their writing is. Whenever people comments on it, they always.. ALWAYS try to dismiss it and "argue" with people
Yeah
i don't know about you, but i think that professional screenwriter or published author shouldn't write a mary sue. otherwise why would i want to pay for the level of writing that i could found on any fan fiction website of my choosing made by a 13 y.o that in some cases actually have better writing for free?
@@koopie_koop Bad take. Doesn’t matter if they’re “professional” or “published”, it’s still their creative work, they’re free to create what they want. No one is forcing you to spend money on it.
Lmao, in the Dragon Ball fandom, pretty much every OC is created to be better than the other roleplayer's XD
mary sue is a paradox- seemingly "perfect" and "everyone loves them", yet, sometimes theyre despised for being so perfect, which makes them not perfect anymore
I mean, you have a good point
Hmmm is that what happened to Mary Sue Pleasant in sims 2 or was that something else?
I've just realised that this is basically the premise of Tomie.
literally the most cathartic thing i ever did was sit down and force myself to write an extremely mary-sue oc. just hands down said to myself “idc if she’s cringy, she’s gonna be WHATEVER I WANT”. i’d been so traumatised by seeing ppl getting hunted for sport bc their characters were borderline interesting for a change that i realised i’d forgotten how to write anything actually engaging and fun. i still use that character from time to time, albeit a little more toned down, and she’s become a staple of the small group i share my writing with
I want to try this! Thank you for the inspo! I also have a lot of weird art trauma and it scared me out of a bunch of art forms that I want to reconnect with now
I have a character whos realistic but looks like a bit of a mary sue. White angel wings, literally a 3'6 axolotl god, based off of the blue axolotl from minecraft
but is very feisty and can be irresponsible at times, and although they are a good fighter, their reflexes are absolutely horrible and theyre basically blind.
Furries are being hunted for sport and I don’t like that
Wholesome!!
I mean one could argue that since the character was written with the tropes in mind and the writer make conscious decisions giving them those traits they are not really mary sue since they are written to actually fit the story and universe unlike the traditional world bending mary sue
The part near the end where you talked about how it’s ok to make art and have fun, man, that made me cry. It IS fun to make crazy overpowered characters and the fact that we’re made to feel like that fact is bad- it just sucks. Thank you so much for this video ❤️
i was obsessed with taking the mary sue litmus test as a kid and there was a “de-sueifer” question (that takes away from your score) that was something like “if your character is a hybrid creature, do they have the weaknesses of both species instead of the strengths?” i thought that was a super cool idea for an edgy anti-mary sue story. buuuuut of course i ended up making an edgy sue 😭
Having a blend of strengths and weaknesses is interesting and pretty realistic imo. Like, if your character is part bird or something, maybe their light weight allows them to fly but also leaves them prone to serious injury.
I've made several edgy mary sues in my childhood, and so seeing kids do the same makes me realize that mary sue ocs are just another step towards making great characters and stories. Essentially, if you're a young artist and/or writer, you have the power to do anything so make your edgy ocs with every elemental power and weird color schemes. You can make super complex new york times bestsellers later, just embrace what you have now, because your angel-demon-nekos are yours and yours only.
YESS
I think the whole Mary sue hate train completely destroyed a part of my creativity, making me terrified of being cringe and being obsessed with others approval that I couldn’t even make a backstory for ocs
no fr... like this vid is hilarious and im not mad at all but SO many of the things being made fun of are my characters exact traits and my feelings are hurt lmfao i cant help it its fun to have a quirky character
then I believe it's time to embrace cringeness :}
same,I have stopped drawing but if I do it again I should stop worrying about what others think as i always limited myself by that and it really is horrible, I think that's why I lost my taste for drawing
as the comment above, i should embrace the cringe lol
sorry if english is bad i used translation for some parts
I made 2 OCs who have some Mary Sue traits, but they aren’t superheroes or goddesses.
just make a balanced character and if people tell you its a mary sue then fix it
my Mary Sue was a humanoid kitsune with nine tails, four wings and a scythe (of course) who could control black magic and turn into a fox whenever she wanted to. she had glowing teal hair and a glowing teal kimono. her name was Yumi and her personality traits included being overpowered, being quirky, impressing everyone around her and liking cookies (because she’s not like other girls, of course).
edit: when someone takes her cookies, she becomes all black-and-red and starts levitating, because why wouldn’t she?
Man, the whole anti Mary Sue culture was so wild back in the day. I was totally one of those people who went down the "Mary Sues are a crime against humanity" pipeline. I don't think I was ever outright mean to anyone or gave unwelcome criticism, but I still feel bad about my behavior because at the end of the day, I was contributing to a culture that was surpressing the creative expression of kids.
People who were using the term "Mary Sue" to make fun of people just startin out writing or drawing were simply bullies at heart. If I still use the term, it's always in reference to, like, well-paid Hollywood scriptwriters making inauthentic, lazy characters when they know better. That's where the term belongs.
same here, we're talking circa 2000 when I was a very young adult thus "too old" and "too cool" for stinky Mary Sues! I followed LJs that roasted them, especially in the HP fandom. Even though there were rules about not harassing those people aka 'don't touch the poop' there's no doubt were hurt feelings and for what? For me to be like 'not like other girls' and feel superior?
Joke's on me, turns out I was not a girl, I just didn't understand that at the time.
I was one of those kids who made Mary Sue characters, when I saw how hated they were it made me cringe at myself lol
I was right with you! I remember making videos about it and I even was 'cancelled' once (it wasn't called cancelling, but obviously the original owners of the OCs found my channel). I just lied about my age and eventually privated the videos lmaooo
The biggest Sue I ever created was a Tokyo Mew Mew OC. She was an Amur Leopard girl named Cocoa with a white, “ripped-up wedding dress” costume, and everything I wrote her in got _super_ dark (repressed trauma go!) She was such a blatant self insert that she’d even moved to Tokyo from the UK 😭 I think her weapon was a violin crossbow that could create huge lightning strikes/booms from the music.
The reason I made her is pretty wholesome though. An ad came on TV about how badly endangered these leopards were and little 9 year old me took it as my personal duty to spread as much awareness as possible.
Also, I’ve just remembered that she was the tsundere scientist’s childhood friend, but they reunited and fell in love as teenagers. LUCKILY that stayed a secret between me and Notepad bc I was too embarrassed to rp romance with other people, but _my god_ it haunts me 😭
That's neat, the tidbit about caring about the endangered Amur leopard.
the violin crossbow idea is like. very cool
So wholesome u.u
Honestly that violin idea sounds really cool. I could imagine something like that in a show
i used to love jokingly making mary sue ocs like they're so fun to make since you don't have to follow any form of "rules"
no same. I just wanted to insert my mary sue OCs into whatever show i wanted and rewrite the plot around them lmfao
I miss making joke mary sue ocs, like, they were so fun to design;;
i still do that, i love drawing stupidly over the top characters! can highly recommend
@@methequin7239 Now I kinda wanna do that
@@rolboo6158 i’m gonna do it lol
One of my first ever oc’s was named Pyro. I made her when I was in fourth grade and if I remember correctly, she was basically a recolor of Chara from Undertale with a backstory of being a murderous demon wolf girl who was grown in a lab or something. It’s crazy how much I’ve grown as an artist and character creator over the years since I created Pyro and though I never knew what a Mary Sue was at the time that the oc was created, I think making chatacters like that is a universal experience for most artists or writers who started out young
Being 28 and watching this rly resurfaced so many memories and emotions. I used to make OCs which were basically self-inserts back in 2005-2012, then after I graduated high school I decided “f*ck it” and went full-throttle into self inserts and I haven’t looked back since then.
So if anyone is reading this and feeling like you’ve missed your chance to make “cringy OCs/self inserts”, it is not too late at all! Please make anything and everything that makes you happy!! Adult life sucks and literally drawing my self inserts interacting w/ my fav characters (and shipping myself w/ a few of them who are appropriately aged for me) is prob one of the few things which make me feel pure, unbridled happiness and joy.
Also!! You don’t need to create “well-written and thought out OCs/self-inserts” either. You can make stuff just cuz it makes you happy. You can make things just because you think a character is hot and you wanna create romantic interactions. There doesn’t have to be a “good reason” for them to exist. They can just exist.
Turns out existence is suffering and fiction is our way of coping. Who knew?
Do what you want. You only have like maybe 80 or so years to do so.
You've unlocked the inspiration I needed to get back into writing, please accept this heart-felt thank you
Literally me lol. The only difference between my OCs now and my OCs back then is that they're older and might possibly follow the lore just a tiny bit more lmao.
Me personally can't write good stories to save my life. But it doesn't stop me from IMAGINING my OC constantly in my head for Lord knows how many years 😆! I know for a fact he was inspired by the Princess Ai manga series.
And is probably a close clone of Princess Ai with some differences and is male instead. Again I don't write stories at all (though I want to 😭), but rather just imagine different OC's and they just living in my head rent free forever lol 😂😭.
@@TheMeloettaful Hey-- write bad stories. Seriously:D if you want to write, write! Imagine you have a hundred crap stories in the end of your fingers - you gotta type those out to get to the good ones. Writing bad stories is *awesome*. DO IT. I command you.
I have a sister who is quite a bit younger than me who is just getting into character creation. I absolutely refuse to use the term Mary Sue no matter how Sue-ish her characters may be. I think she needs encouragement, not put downs.
Who knows, that character may be important to her and grow and change as she grows. I want my sister to have fun with her world building and if that means a horrible OP sparkle dog has to be the main character for a while, so be it.
We all have that one OC that has been with us since the beginning and has developed over time.
honestly people care WAY TOO MUCH about the so-called 'quality' of others' work. you're doing an amazing thing; the beauty in art should be the passion and creativity someone feels, not their results, and it's so sweet that you're helping build confidence in and passion of writing with your sister!!!
THAT'S ALSO MY SISTER😭😭😭
I’ll admit..that’s true hell I STILL have the first two I made..one gone on to be my avatar and become the nickname for me via online friends but the best part is how I managed to make them go from how they were to how they are currently (example the first one ever having the typical playboy ideal…to now having that ideal out of personal issues and just simply needs someone to just remind himself that he has people that can hear him out)
My very first oc is a testimony to my hopes and dreams (before I even realized them) and longing, as well as very few of the things about me that have stayed consistent over the years.
The consistency is a big thing because I grew up in a very unstable environment and I’ve gotten really fucked up from it and I don’t really know who I am, I don’t have a consistent sense of self if any at all, and it’s very troubling. For many years I only had them and my own imagination as an escape from the constant abuse I went through.
They’re quite cringe and they started off as a self insert, but now they’re their own person (although there are still things about them that represent some of my thoughts and feelings ofc) and I’ve uhh dulled them down a little (they’re just not as over the top anymore and I fixed a few things for balance but they’re still incredibly op [but given they’re an old eldritch being I think that makes sense]), but they’re still pretty cringy. But that’s ok, I’m cringe too and I love them. They will always hold a special place in my heart, they were there for me since basically the beginning (I was super super young, like maybe 5-7 I think? Perhaps even younger but around that age I believe)
I definitely know I’ve had a character since I was about 4-5 years old, they were kind of just in my head doing all these different things and going on adventures.
I remember I changed them up a bit after I discovered Undertale in 2017. I’ve developed them A LOT since then, I’ve changed their design quite a bit 3 times. I’m not even sure they’re the same character I had when I first made them, they do still look very faintly reminiscent of them though. I mentioned Undertale because I decided I loved it and the fandom enough that I wanted to dedicate them to it, I made multiple stories for them as they developed and I finally finished one that (I think) makes sense and fits in to the fandom and canon world of Undertale perfectly.
Their name is Amethyst Zane and she is my profile picture :)
I’ll be happy to share details about them if anyone wants to know anything, even stuff about _why_ I think they fit perfectly into the world of Undertale :D
fun fact: in seventh grade, one of my english assignments was writing a short story and sharing it to the class. my friends and i thought my immortal was so funny that i made a my immortal fic in the pov of draco getting attacked at the mcr concert. i shared it in front of the class and only my friend group found it funny. i got a low score lol
oh noooo lmaooo
oof
I hate when teachers low score creative writing assignments, especially ones that are younger, because it should just be about writing something fun that you enjoy
Bro you got to get creative on the writing assignment. One time I wrote a whole essay about a character breaking into a school to find the last clue to a scavenger hunt. I looked up prices for local soda shops in Utah so my character could do the math about how many slushies they could get with the prize money.
( also is that a Cleo pfp I see? )
Frankly the entire grade of a creative writing assignment should award any genuine attempt at expression a decent mark just for managing to try. High marks can be there for people who excel, but downgrading people for not being creative enough in a social milieu that punishes any form of earnestness is nonsense.
Honestly I’m of the opinion that “Mary Sues” are kind of a stage that every creative person goes through when first beginning to write characters. They’re not well-written by any stretch but they’re a first foray into character design and more broadly character creation for almost everyone. That said there’s nothing morally wrong with having them in your character arsenal- they can be fun- but I think the term in its ideal usage can be utilized to highlight a specific kind of writing issue for people who want to write compelling characters for an audience one day.
Don’t forgot the Mary Sue’s lecturing the whole cast for being ignorant and they all just stand there gaping in blank awe of her intelligence and morals
sometimes I see "horrendous and edgy backstory of infinite suffering" duct taped on as an after thought/defense, lol
I did this but it didn't make it a better written character, because I had no clue what I was doing just "why should u listen to my character's insightful and intelligent monologues? BECAUSE THEY BEEN THROUGH CRAP AND IT WAS TERRIBLE, AND NOW THEY ARE STRONG AND EDGY DON'T ASK QUESTIONS"
Okay so basically Mary sues and y/n's are basically the same except one is a your name in a fanfic.
@@Office_chair yep
@@starboycesar well I mean that's basically what it sounds like.
That they're both the same thing.
How dare they call them “sparkle dogs” when “furry sues” was right there
YESSS
cuz tbh most young furries make their sona a wolf lol
"Mary Sue" hadn't cross-pollinated from criticism of fanfiction nearly as strongly at the time the term "sparkledogs" was coined. Plus the majority were canids.
@@mi1kguts young fur me making my fursona a cat: *I beg to differ*
While it's true cats are very common, you can't deny it: Canines are the most popular choice.
I used to be so afraid of making Mary Sues that all my characters were kinda bland but now I have come full circle and make all the edgy and over the top ocs my middle school heart could only dream of.
same and i'm having the time of my life doing so tbh! screw subtlety i'm gonna draw my cool femboy vampire oc all the time forever 😤
My oldest oc started out as a Sonic fan character. Visually she was quite plain, the Sue-ness was in her significance to the Sonic universe and characters. She was the last iteration of the ultimate lifeform before Shadow, was best friends with Maria, and was ejected to Earth for being too much of a rebellious free-thinker. She could run almost as fast as Sonic, climb walls like Knuckles, and take an insane beating before tapping out of a fight. She was plucky and selfless but also got to be angsty over being an artificial lifeform and losing Maria. And of course, Shadow was SUPER into her and constantly picking a fight with and/or trying to seduce her, despite her having absolutely zero interest in anything to do with him.
i’ve always felt bad about enjoying stories with mary sue’s. but i’ve come to realize that i like to imagine myself as strong and beautiful. i’ve always relied on these types of characters to help me cope.
mary dues are thé best histoire ! Love em
Aww, how much to remember!
My Mary Sue was my anchor while being terribly bullied in middle school. It was a self related for an idiotic fan fiction I used to write while literally in class, it was my biggest escape from a very dark period that was happening in that moment and it helped to feel like I had a safe space. And at the time I didn’t even know what fanfics were, it just made sense to write one. My mother throw away all my three handwritten notebooks, cause she didn’t like what I was writing about, sometimes I think about it and it’s still so sad that she did that and I don’t have them anymore…
What where you writing About?
that’s a real shame i woulda liked 2 read these actually I think it sounds fun
Aww~ I know how that feels. My mother loved throwing my books away.
I dont know what's worse, your mom throwing them away, or that if i were your mom, id keep them to laugh (endearingly) at (I hope it would get to a point where we would appreciate/enjoy the teen cringe together).
Oh i can feel it, while struggling with depression at elementary School i did similar, but i drawn comics at night about my oc that was self insert but ideolized, she was baisicly cool Mary Sue with group of friends, lider that was strong, brave and Smart whitch i had non of
Well, my grandmother's name is Mary Sue and she actually WAS perfect. Her only known flaws, actually, were that she didn't have rainbow scene hair or date Gaara from Naruto. She made outstanding seasonal sugar cookies though. RIP, grandma, I miss you. You could have had it all if you had just invested in a bottle of Manic Panic 😔
Your grandma was a good woman.
My condolences goes to you.
When Izzy said "accidentally killed my parents as a child" I had to pause for a hot minute since one of my main characters, a 12 year old Japanese demon girl who can skip realities with a weird adoptive family, has that as her backstory-
She also fits in with the edgy Mary Sue category... I'm never growing out of my childhood dreams at this point-
I was so adamantly against EVER writing a self insert as a young fanfic author because I not only thought I’d be mocked, but also because they genuinely made me uncomfortable to read. as an adult I see absolutely nothing wrong with writing yourself into a story, but as a young fanfic consumer, putting yourself into the canon was the quickest way to put me off a fic.
oh same i can comfortably imagine myself in my favorite shows all day but to actually write it (even if its only for myself) irks me 😟
I fully agree there, if I'm going to read a fic I personally am looking to read about the characters already there. It's even hard for me to accept fics with ocs that aren't self-insert
yeah usually self insert is just a private thing, people hate it to this day, I particularly love it tho, feels cozy to have your persona or watch someone's persona have the oportunity to make friends with canon characters , I'm extremely lonely so I think about it everyday and do sketches, but people almost never see them, I post very little because I know people hate it and don't care, I barely finish anything tho, I still need to find myself a friend who shares the experience :,)
@@aikathedirtyrat3140 i didn't realize i was even doing it during childhood until i was introduced to the concept on the internet and now im an adult and still do that lmao definitely one of the healthier coping mechanisms i have. I feel you so dw while some might find it weird, i think it's a fun activity that can help you deal with loneliness and/or just for the sake of it :)
All my potential "Mary Sues" were suicidal, lonely and couldn't control their powers, often losing fights and friends.
I feel like this says a lot about my mental state at the time.
Same 💀
Same😨
I'm not even sure my main OC is a mary-sue or not and I'm worried for that. I feel like she maybe started off that way (cause I wrote her officially when I was 9) but as I got older I feel like she probably became less and less
Sounds more like anti sue
This. Don't expose my ass. XD
I remember someone called one of my OCs a Mary Sue cause she wore a sexy outfit once. It literally shook preteen me to my core 🤣
My preteen writing of my character being called a Mary Sue because I literally made her like what I liked and apparently because I listen to rock music and my character liked it, it was an edgy Mary Sue
My name is Luna and I get called a Mary Sue even today because people think I'm faking it 😭
@@Notheare damn your parents were trying to make a marry sue
@@Notheare Had a friend named Luna in 4th grade. Not that odd of a name. (Though technically it was a nickname derived from her proper name which is Chinese, and I have forgotten.)
Imagine being called a lore accurate Anti-Sue as an insult 💀
I had the idea for a “villain” OC that would intentionally be an edgy neon over-the-top Mary Sue and the way they’d be “defeated” is by erasing their over-the-top traits from a book where said traits are written.
EDIT: To elaborate, the idea was that there would be this book that makes anything written in it become real, and some random average joe uses this book and writes so much ridiculous stuff that they become the aforementioned over-the-top villain OC.
I LOVE THIS
@@karak962 Lmao thank you
There's an anime called Re:Creators which has a similar plot, where someone's ridiculously OP edgy OC that was popular online became real and gained more power each time someone created fanart or made a fanfic about her. It's pretty fun haha.
PERFECT OMG CLAIM THIS BEFORE SOMEONE STEALS
wait this reminds me of that amazing world of gumball episode lol
Having had the cringes for Mary-Sue characters as a teen, I can now say that they aren't terrible at all! Looking at it from a 30+ teachers perspective, they are great for kids to express themselves. A lot of kids do not feel important or like they have power at all, their Mary-Sues give them that feeling and that first look into what it could be like if you were the best at something (or everything, haha). It can be a coping mechanism or just expression of creativity, which seems puzzling given many of them have the same traits, but art welcomes learning from other people.
Personally, I now feel terrible looking back at all the Mary-Sue hate and the guides telling you who your character can or can't be. It's like people were mad when somebody was trying to be special and to stand out, subconsciously they were trying to make characters fit this mold of being less extraordinary, more regular. I can see how this could really impact a childs or teens psyche, as they put themselves into their Mary-Sues. Kids are not trying to create a well-balanced character that needs to pass the "are they believable" check.
Great video in dissecting the subject, this was quite nostalgic!
I keep reading about everyone's Mary Sou's and I really wish younger me would have went more ham on the whole trope. It seems like it was so fun and would have maybe helped little me's confidence. Maybe. I don't know but gosh these are all so amazing.
@@OseiBayard omg same! I deliberately tried to tone down most of my Fandom OCs and while some were related to MCs I tried, even when I was 12, to not Write a Mary Sue.
Though I eventually compiled all of my OCs into a self insert that was Literally Me that was chosen to jump between worlds (the fandom properties I loved) and take on different forms (my characters) in each world so…. I think I eventually got there 😂
@@OseiBayard As someone who's currently working on a Gary Stu for the hell of it. Go. Live your dreams!
I remember making a character that was borderline “Mary Sue”, and watching your video made me realize why I made her. I was a new kid in middle school with new classmates when I first thought of her. I continued to play around with the character as a somewhat isolated high schooler, and then as a college student in a new city. There’s something comforting about making up a world and character that you can control. It’s like an imaginary friend, but for teens.
As a small kid I had a Mary Sue character called "Rainbow Regenbogen" (Regenbogen just means rainbow in german so she was called rainbow rainbow) who was a horse with blue fur and a rainbow hair, a horn and wings (no, she wasn't based on Rainbow Dash) and she was the guardian of her homeland and fought evil, was super nice and loved by everyone. I don't remember much of her but I do remember that she had no flaws 😂
I was so terrified of creating a Mary Sue during my whole life that my mind developed this little set of rules I automatically put in practice when creating ANY OC, basically the more powerful/ charismatic/ capable they are, the more horrendously bad things happen to them so they never get to be overpowered just sad
(ex: oh this character is sooo pretty and nice and powerful everyone loves them, let’s make them kill their whole bloodline and carry with the unconscious guilt, unable to coexist with the thoughts of past and future making them uncapable of getting over things or think about the consequences of their actions).
My therapist might say is a way of mirroring my own self sabotage onto my ocs but I call it character development :)
"This character is like me but she has wings and lightning powers, let's burn down her whole village and let her live with the assumption that her best friend died that day"
I use the exact same system, my poor ocs are being traumatized left and right all because they happen to be talented and powerful 😭
@@dream_walker9726 yes, especially my main oc, a robot that got created as a war machine, I traumatized him so much..
oh thank god i'm not the only one who does this XD
“This character is like me but he has a 2 robotic partners that give him the powers of flight,turning into a tank,and has insane sword skills. Too bad that because of his powers the villains found his school and almost killed his best friend and multiple students were killed,and he was tortured by the guy who made his robotic partners”
When I was in middle school, I had a character for a story I was writing who was named Maria Suzanne, and was literally a parody of Mary Sues. The running joke was the other characters hated her and repeatedly tried to kill her but she would always survive because she’s perfect. Looking back she’s one of my favorites
Yeah, that DOES sound pretty entertaining.
@@XwX1001 *William spotted* (Hi Will 👋)
@@aviatoons Greet. ♡
Wait... always survives... like... always comes back? AFTON??!
You basically wrote a family friendly version of Tomie! 😂
I made a Mary Sueh-ish character just to make her the dead elder sister of my main OC, so her perfectness was more of a twisted memory of a young grieving girl
actually love that that’s super interesting
@@daddycool7316 oh thank you!
love that idea!!!!
tbh a good OC driving force, this kinda "you must be as perfect as your sister was" energy, but also since the character is dead, their "perfectness" may be plausible and just a glorified memory of a lost closed one
Omori moment
I made a Percy Jackson OC in 4th grade who was the son of Hades AND Hecate and was totally dragon themed, and was best friends with most of the crew at camp half-blood.
Ten years later and I still regularly draw him. He has the exact same abilities and personality as he did back then, only I've refined him much more as a character. He is also one of my most liked and iconic characters amongst my friend groups.
Moral of the story? Don't quit on what you think is cool cause someone told you not to!
So my main OC, Felix was a Mary Sue that adapted with the phases of my life. When I was in preschool, she was a fairy who could shape shift and take the place of existing characters with the hope to solve friendship problems. In Elementary, she was a Lava Girl with Clawdeen's color pallet, she retained the ability to travel between worlds, but she stayed herself, she was also a member of the Guardians from Rise of the guardians, her fairy past was brought up in the lore. In late elementary early middle school, she was a Ticci Toby rip off, still with those previously mentioned powers. In mid middle school, she finally had a different hair color, blonde, and was shy and never did anything. Late middle school, he came out as Trans and got some neat new powers, losing the shape shifting. Each iteration was faced with acknowledging the past parts of themself.
I got very attached to Felix and wanted to figure out how to rewrite this self insert Mary Sue's self acceptance story as a real thing. I've now graduated high school and Felix has his own world built with it's own lore and characters. I didn't even hear the term Mary Sue until 3 years ago. I just always wanted to write this character in a way that made sense for a larger audience, without changing him too much. It's so crazy to think that this character started out as a comfort self insert Mary sue friendship fairy. The mind of a child is so beautiful. Myth of Friendship helped me get through the hardest years of my life, and now, with Felix, I get to share that with people, and maybe even help them, too.😊
Omg I think I know you from DeviantArt
That's really cool. My oldest character doesn't recognize her past iterations, but I'm slowly thinking of ways I can add them in her current version as references, since in an unexpected twist she actually became more and more Mary Sue-ish with time 😂
my OC Crystal has been with me for as long as i can remember and has only gotten worse with time
every power in the universe has been given to her at one point and i have no intention of stopping
i agree that mary sue ocs are pretty much just harmless fun and a form of escapism for kids, and if it makes them happy, good for them. But I gotta admit, once they’re brought into a setting where people other than the creator has to deal with them, they can get really irritating. I’ve dealt with mary sue dnd characters, rp characters, and mary sues in collaborative writing projects and those sorts of characters are flat-out insufferable to work with when they aren’t actually your own character because they ruin the fun for everyone else by breaking the continuity of the world, immediately resolving every conflict, and just taking all the moments in the spotlight from other players/characters. To be fair though that’s kind of a completely separate problem
Also, when the Mary Sue OC moves from some DA roleplay account to a professionally published/broadcasted work 💀 somehow it’s even worse if they’re _not_ the main character and instead some side character who shows up halfway through the series to throw a wrench into everything.
Yeah, I remember trying out some fiction role playing in a forum online (around 2007 before social media took over the function of forums) when I was in my early teens and one girl had a Mary Sue character that immediately resolved every single conflict I tried to introduce. Every other participant in the forum got bored of it and quit, and I’m still annoyed at this random 12 year old girl to this day…
Mary Sou DnD types are so frustrating... A watched a whole dnd group dissolve after a boss fight when the Mary Sou player had a screaming match with the DM.
Once had someone's Drama Sue borrow one of my dudes to help her character give birth and it was like, WTF no.
i think that observing mary sues on their own as harmless fun and then observing them SEPERATELY as a problem when it comes to joint projects are.... honestly, that's such a //mindblowingly// good take. That really explains the whole phenomenon very neatly. I applaud the critical thinking.
Feels weird seeing how creative, colourful, edgy peoples oc's were while I, as a kid, wrote about a mary sue scientist who saved lives with her medicines and dating her childhood crush. She also had a pet penguin because she went to Alaska (like that one big bang theory episode, cuz I liked the show) and found an eggs. She is a mery sue but definitely more tame, also, just realised I really liked researchers as a kid and now, as I recently got my zoology degree. Never really thought about it until now cuz I had other researchers/doctor oc's.
Yay, that's cool!!
You didn't make a Mary Sue, you predicted yourself. Name your future penguin after me
@@galuxius1861 I second this
Now you have to dress up as her
i used to have a may sue type chatacter, but don’t remember much about them since i never really drew them, but i adapted this character into my new sona which is cool
I went to an art day camp as a kid & part of that was a creative writing class. We did this exercise when I was like.. 11? Where we talked about naming characters and the idea was to write down a name and everyone would put the name in a hat and it would be picked randomly and the class would come up with a backstory for them. Again . I was 11. So I thought a perfect name for a sci-fi character would be “Warson Trek”… yeah. But unfortunately when my name was picked, the teacher wasn’t nice about it and decided to roast a Literal Child about how “fanfiction-y” the name was in front of the whole class. I used to wonder what the hell that lady’s damage was but this video has made me realize… it was this
Warson Trek isn’t even that bad as far as sci fi goes, wtf lady
Warson Trek fully just sounds like a Normal Name. Camp counselors on power trips sure are something
@@loopd121 ikr? I had this archery counselor back in BSA, and he was just total, grade-A arsehole. Mind you, he was a 18-year-old life scout and I was but a wee cub scout. There wasn't really anything I knew about archery, and he basically ruined my archery experience. His companion counselor was much more chill tho, and at least didn't _totally_ ruin it for me (and everyone else).
(I think he was having a shit day or sum. Couldn't blame him.)
The original Mary Sue story absolutely killed me, it’s so funny
You should read The comics then
"Her youthful beauty... And her beautiful youth" 😭
You know it's a parody because the Rigel system only has 12 planets.
I had a mary sue oc called Shadow (and sometimes Z) and she was the "Goddess of power" and she had every power ever, could kill god, married the devil, had thousands of forms, 60 kids, was 16 (😦), if you tried to hurt or kill her she'd take half your power or life, couldn't die from ANYTHING, was super rich, was so hot that every boy who saw her would instantly fall in love, every girl was jealous and hated her, and she was the best singer in the world and would enchant you with her songs
I think we ALL had a character like that. I think it’s apart of being a really insecure kid who wants to feel control of something you know? My Naruto OC Crimson was the same way xD
60 kids😭😭😭
60 kids at 16 😦
Was Shadow a rabbit cuz I can’t think of any other way that’s physically possible at 16..
Every other girl WANTED the 60 kids lifestyle?! 😱
I used to have this one character called “Choco” She was mysterious, loved and great at everything, i dont much know how to describe her but i still find her important and am using her for one of my stories although her character has been changed a bit with personality and design, she’s also only a background character yet a great memory.
I was at an MLP convention a few months back, and there was a “worst OC contest” and the amount of Mary Sues we churned out was incredible. My Mary Sue of choice was Ravenwing Bloodmoon, son of Sombra, struggling with his dark and tragic past. Alicorn, naturally, glowing eyes, of course, the like
Never thought I would ever say that about something MLP related but that sounds genuinely fun, totally would participate. Also, great job with the OC.
@@whateverxwhatever9064 it really was! Honestly, I really reccomend mlp conventions. I’ve been to a lot of non mlp cons, and I can say very confidently that the mlp con crowd is some of the nicest, most accepting people. Really lovely group :)
I made a Mary Sue character over ten years ago who's entire existence was for the sole purpose of making a Mary Sue. Most people that read about her actually ended up liking her because she was like the nicest person in the universe and her biggest character flaw was that she apologized too much. She was literally the epotime of the "I've only had Arlo for a day and a half, but if anything happened to him, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself" meme. She would legitimately forgive her own murderer and they'd probably off themselves of their own volition afterward just for ending her life. I brought her back as a life cleric in D&D years later. She was my Disney princess cleric. I still love her.
Gwineere might be a Mary Sue, but she's _my_ Mary Sue, dammit.
Thank you for sharing this story, I love hearing other people's journeys with writing and how their creative process either differs or shares similarities. A lot of times with my own writing, I like to use archetypes as a scaffold to build my characters around. I pick a social or psychological concept as the basis for the character first, then go from there. This allows me to view the whole story as a bunch of gaps that need to be filled, so I can craft characters, settings, and events whose role is to fill this gap. Basically, I ask myself "What does the story need right now?" which is great when you are trying to get from point A to point B but have no idea how to get there. I created one character years ago who has essentially been in every story I've ever written because he exists to fill such a common gap!
There's really nothing wrong with a Mary Sue. That's just a lazy way of criticizing a character who is otherwise boring.
I made a character like that, but for MLP. He was a "Shadow Alicorn" with a grey coat, a green mane and tail, and purple eyes. His special talent was shadow magic.
He was also married to Derpy Hooves (a background character) and ran the local tavern, and firmly stayed out of any shenanigans and adventures because he enjoyed his nice peaceful life.
I’m traumatized by Mary-sue culture, I literally struggle making characters TO THIS DAY. I would/still hear voices basically brutally criticizing my characters and designs like a comment section on art forums (even if nobody was ever going to see the character)
I was so terrified of being cancelled for having an overpowered character that I deprived myself creatively, even my husband used to say “you’ve given this character a cool ability but also several limitations and flaws because of that. so now it’s not fun for you anymore..”
Things like this make me glad I wasn’t on the internet when I was younger
Idk dude, limitations is what actually makes it fun. Limitless ability can be fun but until a certain point
@@enterurnamehere27 that’s a good point! I learned that when I became more experienced, having an overpowered character can be fun but not without some sort of opposition or limits.
@@enterurnamehere27
Exactly, it's fun to write scenarios for characters to work around these flaws without straight up rewriting their traits. This is why Mary Sues just sounds boring as hell.
@@GhostGayle i have an idea: give them unlimited power, but have them getting bored as the limit ("life's not exciting enough with things solved in 2 secs" etc.)
Something my brother told me and it kinda stayed with me is that growing, either in certain skills or just being more mature, isn't just being different from how you were. But also being able to look at those phases and laugh at them. Personally if I didn't have mary sue characters I probably wouldn't know anything about writing characters
this is such an amusing repeating pattern in human behavior. a lot of Ancient Chinese stories are just people writing mad fanfic, making all their favourite historical figures insanely powerful and successful.
I had no idea Abt that but that's literally the best thing
I mean Beowolf isn't any better
I never thought about it like that but in all honesty, you’re right 😂
Beowulf is just bad fanfic
I love dorky ancient writers
when I was 12 (2016) I made a 280-picture comic using the pony creator game and free backgrounds. it’s still somewhere in the wild vk pony groups, uploaded from an account that I can’t access anymore because it’s deleted. i reread it every summer. it was never finished, but I decided to please my inner child by remaking it as a full-fledged comic. maybe it won’t happen this year or the next one, but one day I’m gonna call up my old childhood friend who supported me back then and show her that the story still lives.
Hey, good luck to ya on that!
Me and my friend had OCs of two girls that could turn into giant, magical and winged panthers. Theirs was black with blue feather tips and eyes and mine was white with pink. Their tails could turn into various weapons like a chainsaw. The title of our world (?) was "Super Panthers: Power Activated".
Sounds like it'd make a good magical girl anime tbh!
That sounds epic
Iconic
That’s genuinely so badass, good for you guys
that’s perfect
we NEED to normalize mary sues and gary sues again. i NEED to see a neon rainbow sparkly unicorn OC in the MLP universe. AND YES I WILL WORSHIP THOSE OC'S YOU CANNOT STOP ME
This may be my fave video yet. Seeing the OC's that kids make, fully unedited, and with their full chest, is just so delightful. Cringe is dead, let kids imagine themselves as the coolest, prettiest, most bad-ass version of themselves
I never had strong opinions about Mary Sues when I was a teen in fandom spaces, EXCEPT, when self-insert OCs were shipped with a character I considered myself married too. Which makes me think, it's probably not too far-fetched that virtual jealousy kind of played a role in the anti Mary Sue movement.
The jealous “not like other girls” mentality _definitely_ contributed 💀 some people hated any kind of pretty/beautiful OC. It probably triggered some people’s insecurities ig.
This reminds me of the sans fangirls craze. Like, making videos to k*ll other OCs because they were jealous... What.
@@Octalgari those were… interesting times…
no because my main issue with that was always people who mischaracterized a character i like to be the bad guy who bullies their OC and then gets shunned once everyone else figures out theyre bullying the OC 😬 literally still hate that tbh
I remember having a self-insert sue in middle school who was a highly celebrated general, a dragon rider and a prettier version of me with elf ears. I kept this OC until I stumbled across various Livejournals, DeviantART and the infamous Mary Sue litmus test -- that's when I decided to give her this huge makeover and make her some swamp hag with exaggerated traits of everything I disliked about myself. I kept her in the back of my head for years, even playing her in a recent DnD campaign. I'm proud to say she came full circle with a pet pseudodragon and a pet griffin, owning a Rakshasa strip club and having 100+ hot tiger men husbands, and the ultimate character arc of fulling embracing her awkward self, her charm and most importantly her cringe.
You are an inspitalration, this sound effin glorious!
I guess you can call it character growth
Your initial version was Eragon, lol
This inspired me to make a dnd character based on my own mary sue oc so thank you
This is healing