"Mary Sue: Meaning, Origin, and How to Fix One"

A Mary Sue is a fictional character, usually a young woman, who is good at everything, loved by everyone and never seriously tested, so the story bends around her instead of pushing back. The term Mary Sue comes from a short parody of Star Trek fan fiction that Paula Smith published in December 1973, and a male character of the same kind is often called a Gary Stu or Marty Stu.

This page sets out what the term means, where it came from in Smith's own words, why it became a fight, and how to give a capable protagonist the weaknesses that stop a reader from calling her one.

What Is a Mary Sue?

Dictionary.com defines a Mary Sue as "a fictional character, especially a female character, who is considered to be unrealistically competent, attractive, and lacking in flaws, and is sometimes thought to be an idealized representation of the author." That last part matters. The label has always carried a suspicion that the writer is living out a wish through the character.

The usual signs:

One or two of these do not make a Mary Sue. Plenty of good heroes are gifted, and plenty are loved. The label fits when the signs add up to a character the story never seriously resists. A hero who simply cannot be killed has plot armor; a Mary Sue usually has that and more, because the story also bends the other characters around her.

Where Did the Term Mary Sue Come From?

From a parody about two hundred words long. Paula Smith and Sharon Ferraro edited a Star Trek fanzine called Menagerie, and in issue 2, December 1973, Smith published "A Trekkie's Tale" without her name on it. It opens:

"Gee, golly gosh, gloriosky," thought Mary Sue as she stepped on the bridge of the Enterprise.

She is "the youngest lieutenant in the Fleet", aged fifteen and a half. Captain Kirk declares his love. Mr. Spock finds her "Flawlessly logical." She turns out to be half Vulcan, springs the landing party from prison "with her hairpin", runs the ship so well she wins "the Nobel Peace Prize, the Vulcan Order of Gallantry and the Tralfamadorian Order of Good Guyhood", and then dies, with the senior officers "weeping unashamedly at the loss of her beautiful youth and youthful beauty, intelligence, capability and all around niceness." The last line: "Even to this day her birthday is a national holiday on the Enterprise."

Smith explained the target in a 2010 interview with Cynthia W. Walker, published in Transformative Works and Cultures in 2011. Fanzines of the time kept printing the same story, "about this adolescent girl who is the youngest yeoman or lieutenant or captain ever in Starfleet. She makes her way onto the Enterprise and the entire crew falls in love with her." The final straw was one where the heroine died and then "resurrected herself". Smith's parody was her comment.

The name itself meant nothing in particular. Smith on calling her Lieutenant Mary Sue: "that's what I called her just to give her a name." She and Ferraro then used "Lieutenant Mary Sue" stories as shorthand in reviews and letters of comment, and the term spread from there.

What Is a Gary Stu?

A Gary Stu (also Marty Stu or Larry Stu) is the male version: a hero who is effortlessly brilliant, universally admired and never in real danger. Smith herself used other names. According to Smithsonian in 2019, she and Ferraro used "Murray Sue" and "Marty Sue" in letters to other zine editors, and in the 2011 interview, when Walker suggested "Marty Stu", she offered "the Wesley Sue".

Her point was that the male kind is everywhere and rarely called out. In the interview she named the Doc Savage film as one, agreed that James Bond and Superman fit, and said: "But we don't notice that when it involves men." To Smithsonian: "It was OK for [men] to have placeholder characters that were incredibly able."

What Did Paula Smith Say Was Wrong With a Mary Sue?

Not that she was capable. Smith's own complaint was about what the character does to everything around her. When fan writers asked what was wrong with their stories, she says, the answer was: "the presence of the Mary Sue warped all the other characters in the story away from their known characterization."

Her second objection was about the reader: "A story demands headspace, and the Mary Sue wants to come and occupy your whole head, so the writer gets the enjoyment and not the reader."

Asked how a writer could do a wish-fulfilment character well, she gave two tests:

1. "you have to give the reader somewhere to fit into in the character"
2. "it can't warp any of the other characters."

She did not ask for a checklist of flaws. She asked for "a character who is interesting, who is human with recognizable foibles, but who is intelligent enough and "heartful" enough to be a bit self-aware."

This is the most useful thing in the term's history, and most explainers skip it. A Mary Sue is less a character with too few flaws than a story with too little resistance.

Why Is the Term Mary Sue Controversial?

Because it is so often used against any capable woman. When Star Wars: The Force Awakens came out in December 2015, screenwriter Max Landis tweeted, as Salon reported, "They finally did it. They made a fan fic movie with a Mary Sue as the main character." The argument over Rey that followed is the best-known use of the term outside fandom, and much of the pushback made the same point Smith did: male heroes of the same shape are rarely given a label at all.

Smith admitted the problem goes back to the start. Asked about the term being used against any woman character, she said: "We did that back in the 1970s too, and I was guilty of that sometimes." She also told Smithsonian: "You can't control a term. Nobody does after a while."

Some who once helped spread the term have walked away from it. The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test on Springhole.net, one of the best-known online checklists, now opens with a notice from its author: "I am no longer supporting this test, nor do I support using the term "Mary Sue" to describe any character for any reason."

A fair reading of all this: the term names a real failure (a story that never pushes back on its hero), but it is a blunt way to name it, and it is aimed at heroines far more often than heroes. Writers get more from the underlying questions than from the label.

What Are the Types of Mary Sue?

Fans have named many variations. TV Tropes keeps a long list; a few of the most used:

• Anti-Sue. Given flaws on paper (plain, clumsy, untalented) but still worshipped by everyone or always successful.
• Canon Sue. A character in the original work, not fan fiction, who fits the pattern.
• Einstein Sue. Far cleverer than everyone around her, professionals included, even when she is an amateur.
• Purity Sue. Kind, gentle and loved by all, with only flaws that make her more likeable.
• Villain Sue. A villain so invincible that the heroes turn stupid so the villain can win.

The names differ, but the test is the same in each case: does the story push back?

What Is a Mary Sue Test?

A Mary Sue test, or litmus test, is a quiz that scores a character's traits (unusual eyes, tragic past, special powers, everyone in love with them) and adds up a total. They spread through fan fiction communities online. They catch the obvious cases, but they count surface details, and a well-written character can fail one while a dull one passes.

A shorter test, built from Smith's own two criteria and the signs above:

1. Does she lose anything that matters before the climax? If not, the story is not resisting her.
2. Does her main weakness cause a problem on the page? A flaw that never costs her is a decoration.
3. Is any other character right when she is wrong? At least once, and in a scene that matters.
4. Does anyone dislike her for a good reason? Not jealousy. A reason the reader can see.
5. Is every major skill set up before she needs it? Earned competence reads as competence; sudden competence reads as wish-fulfilment.
6. Would the other characters act the same way if she were not in the room? Smith's warping test.

Two or more "no" answers, and the character needs work.

How Do You Give a Capable Protagonist Real Flaws?

The fix is rarely to make her worse at things. It is to make the story harder on her.

1. Pick a flaw that grows out of her strength. The brilliant navigator who trusts charts over people; the fighter who cannot back down. A flaw tied to her skill shows up in the scenes where the skill does.
2. Let the flaw cost her something on the page. A friend, a job, a fight she should have won. Character arc types covers how that cost becomes change, or refuses to.
3. Earn the skills early. Show her practising, failing, learning. A skill planted in chapter 2 pays off in chapter 20 without the reader rolling their eyes; one that appears in chapter 20 is a deus ex machina wearing her face.
4. Give the opposition a real chance. An antagonist who wins some rounds makes her wins mean something. How to write a villain has more on giving the other side a plan of its own.
5. Keep the cast in character. Other people should have their own wants, and some of those should cut against hers.
6. Let someone be right about her. A rival, a parent, a friend who says the hard thing and is not proved wrong.

A character profile template with want, need and flaw lines is a quick way to do steps 1 and 2 before drafting.

A Worked Example

The Mary Sue version. Juno Vance joins the salvage ship Kestrel as its youngest navigator. On her first day she plots a course through a debris field that the captain, with thirty years' experience, had called impossible. The engineer, who has hated every new crew member, warms to her at once. When pirates board, she disarms two of them with moves no one taught her. The captain hands her the ship at the end of book one.

Nothing pushes back. The captain's thirty years count for nothing, the engineer stops being who he was, and Juno's skill comes from nowhere.

The fixed version. Juno is the best chart-reader the Kestrel has had, and she knows it. That is the flaw: she trusts the chart over the crew.

• In chapter 3 she plots the debris-field course anyway, against the captain's orders. It works, and the captain docks her pay for it. Being right does not make her trusted.
• The engineer still dislikes her, for a good reason: her shortcut strained the hull, and he spends two nights fixing it.
• In chapter 11 she ignores his warning about a hull reading because her chart says the route is clear. He is right, and a crewman is hurt.
• When pirates board, she does not fight. She hides in the chart room and finds a way to vent the boarding lock, a solution only a navigator would see.
• At the end of book one she is not given the ship. She asks the engineer to check her next course, and he does.

Same skill, same young hero. The difference is that the story now costs her something, and everyone around her stays themselves.

How Do You Check a Character for Mary Sue Signs in Deckle?

Deckle is a novel-writing app with a Codex: a panel of entries for characters, places and things, kept beside the manuscript. Its built-in Character entry already has sections for a flaw, the lie a character believes and their arc, which are the parts a Mary Sue tends to leave empty.

1. Click the Codex button in the menu bar.
2. Click + (New entry) beside Characters and choose Character. The entry opens with Appearance, Personality, Motivation & Goals, Flaw / Inner Conflict, The Lie They Believe, Arc and Backstory.
3. Fill in Flaw / Inner Conflict with the weakness, tied to her strength. For Juno: "Trusts the chart over the crew."
4. Click the + beside the Flaw / Inner Conflict section (Add another field to this section), name the field "What it costs her", choose Multi-line and click Add field. List the scenes where the flaw hurts her, with chapters. If this field stays empty, the flaw is decoration.
5. Click Add fields at the bottom of the entry, type the Group name "Pushback", add a Field name such as "Who is right when she is wrong", choose Multi-line and click Add. Fill it in with the rival, the friend or the mentor who wins an argument with her.
6. Open the entry's Mentions tab. It lists every chapter that names her, in manuscript order, with a bar and a count for how often. Compare the counts with the other leads' Mentions tabs. If she is named in every chapter, many times over, while they barely appear, that is Smith's headspace problem in numbers. Click a chapter to open it at her first mention.
7. Click Save as Template at the top of the entry, name it "Main character", and use it for every lead, so the cost and pushback fields are there from the start.

A Codex template keeps those fields on every character you make from it, and tracking character consistency shows how the same entries keep a character's facts straight across the draft.

Common Mistakes

• Fixing a Mary Sue by adding quirks. Clumsiness, a fear of spiders or a love of coffee are not flaws unless they cost her something in the plot.
• Making her worse instead of making it harder. A capable hero is fine. A story that never resists her is the problem.
• Bending the cast to fit her. If the gruff mentor goes soft the moment she arrives, the reader notices.
• Unearned skills. Set up every skill she will need before she needs it.
• Using a litmus test as a verdict. A quiz counts traits; it cannot see whether the story pushes back.
• Calling every capable heroine a Mary Sue. Ask whether a male hero with the same record would get the label.
• Misquoting the origin. The term began with Paula Smith's "A Trekkie's Tale" in Menagerie 2, December 1973, published anonymously. It was not named after a real fan writer or a real Star Trek character.

Sources

Retrieved 1 November 2026.

• Cynthia W. Walker, "A Conversation with Paula Smith", Transformative Works and Cultures 6 (2011), doi:10.3983/twc.2011.0243. Interview recorded 29 May 2010; includes the full text of "A Trekkie's Tale" (Menagerie 2, 1973). Quotes from the parody follow this reprint; other reprints punctuate the opening line differently ("Gee, golly, gosh, gloriosky") and spell the age out.
• Jackie Mansky, "The Women Who Coined the Term 'Mary Sue'", Smithsonian, 16 May 2019.
• Dictionary.com, "Mary Sue".
• Salon, "'Star Wars' doesn't have a heroine problem: Arguing over whether Rey's a 'Mary Sue' is missing the point", 23 December 2015.
• TV Tropes, "Mary Sue Tropes" (subtype definitions, paraphrased).
• Springhole.net, "The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test" (archived, with the author's notice).