Writing Tips and Reviews

Mary Sue: Special Treatment

Seeing as I had an instance of special treatment hit me in the face today, might as well bring it up in writing. Ah yes, tell me to go somewhere else to "talk about myself" but let literally everyone else talk about themselves and derail the conversation like a train covered in butter sliding down a mountain. That's a Nezzie Monster reference.

Playing favorites comes up way too much in Mary Sue stories, while it happens in other stories, it doesn't appear as often as these ones. Typically those have one instance of special treatment happening and not every other sentence. For instance, in This is Why I Hate You, written by the onion boy who's the joke of the internet, Arthur Gale is allowed to beat up students when he feels like it, be a tough alpha male, be a jackass and get rewarded. If anyone else does it too, they're automatically a terrible person.

It's fine if Mary Sue beat up that one kid because her fragile ego was hurt, but god forbid someone else beat them up, they're a terrible person who should be punished for their crimes. But Mary Sue is fine, she did nothing wrong, she's pure good and always right, she would never be portrayed as the bad guy. See how that looks? Not very good.

Unless there's a reason, not "so Mary Sue can never face consequences", I'm going to judge them both the same because they committed the same crime. If they had different motivations, or if the person they beat up was terrible human being, then I can be a little more forgiving. "Just because" is not a reason and ignoring giving your readers a reason is not going to make them like your writing.

If two characters do the same thing but are treated differently without a reason, that's not good writing. People don't like it when it happens in real life, so don't do it in writing. Princess Ash isn't getting a gold star for stealing art while the artist gets blasted for making a public comment about wanting credit. Playing favorites doesn't look good and it's why Akumu is just as much of a joke as she is.

Just because Mary Sue is a perfect little princess doesn't mean her misbehavior can be ignored or sugarcoated while someone else who did the same thing is punished. It goes both ways, either you punish them all or you don't punish anyone.

Let's bring up Amber, she beat up the "school bully" for no reason other than her ego was hurt, justified it with "everyone who disagrees with me is pure evil", and went on a chapter long tangent about how pure good she is. The "school bully" has no development to show she's one, doesn't pick on anyone except for Amber, and got her ass locked in two seconds.

"I don't know if Greg's ever been in a fight before, that's ain't... that ain't it." -Kappa Kaiju

In all, don't give special treatment just because Mary Sue can never be in the wrong. If you punish one party you should punish the other, and do it based on crime level. Murder has a higher sentence than theft. But if you have two murderers, don't punish one and let the other go free, they're just going to keep killing people because no consequences.