The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test

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You may be looking for The (Original) Mary Sue Litmus Test (1997) by Missy Merlin.

Fanwork
Title: The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test
Creator: Syera Miktayee
Date(s): 2012
Medium: online
Fandom:
External Links: online here
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test is a 2012 Mary Sue Litmus Test by Syera Miktayee at Springhole.net.

The test's main focus is original characters in role-playing games.

Scoring

0-5 Points

Fanfiction & MMO/RPG/Original Fiction: If your score isn't this low from clicking several De-Suifiers, it may be possible that your character is poorly-developed yet, or a potential Anti-Sue or Hood Ornament.

5-16 Points

Fanfiction & MMO/RPG/Original Fiction: Very low chance your character is a Mary Sue. Usually a very safe range to be in.

17-21 Points

Fanfiction: Low-to-moderate chance your character is a Mary Sue. Generally a safe range to be in.

MMO/RPG/Original Fiction: Low chance your character is a Mary Sue.

22-29 Points

Fanfiction: Moderate-to-high chance your character is a Mary Sue. Still a safe-ish range to be in, but be careful.

MMO/RPG/Original Fiction: Low-to-moderate chance your character is a Mary Sue.

30-35 Points

Fanfiction & MMO/RPG/Original Fiction: High-to-very high chance your character is a Mary Sue. Risky range to be in.

36-49 Points

Fanfiction & MMO/RPG/Original Fiction: Extremely high chance your character is a Mary Sue. VERY risky range.

50+ Points

Fanfiction & MMO/RPG/Original Fiction: Your character is almost certainly a Mary Sue, and a bad one at that. On the odd chance that xe isn't, it's most likely you didn't read the instructions properly (some people don't do this, which causes freakishly high scores). If it's the latter case, read the instructions and take the test again.

Introduction: 2011

Hey there, writers and roleplayers! Are you stuck with a case of massive writer's block? Has your muse gone on indefinite hiatus? Or are you just bored? Check out Springhole.net's selection of random generators - with a click of a button, you can create characters, names, settings, items, and more for your creative works! [1]

[early 2019]:

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!

The Universal Mary Sue Test will no longer be supported. Although it will stay up here in case you want it for something, it is no longer endorsed or recommended. Instead, you are encouraged to go to "Does My Character Work Okay?" - How To Tell For Yourself!, which streamlines everything into ten simple questions that cut straight to the core issues. [2]

[October 2019]:

!!! READ THIS FIRST !!!

I am no longer supporting this test, nor do I support using the term "Mary Sue" to describe any character for any reason. The test is simply here for archival purposes and to provide this message to anyone who follows a link to this page. Instead of using it, please go to "Does My Character Work Okay?" - How To Tell For Yourself!. This article streamlines everything into eleven simple questions that cut straight to the core issues.

If you still really really really want to use this test for some reason, please at least stop using the term "Mary Sue." There are far better ways to talk about characters who just don't work for one reason or another than using a term that's more often than not just used to tear down female characters simply for having a prominent, active role in a story. The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test </ref>

Fan Comments Regarding the Intro Changes and 2019 Disclaimer

May 2021

The creator of what was probably *the* Mary Sue Litmus Test back in the day has disavowed the term/test and doesn’t mince words about why. [3]

I was gonna just talk in the tags but I changed my mind because I have some stuff to say.

This test? The Mary Sue Litmus Test? I used this religiously. I would make a new character and then run them through this like my life depended on it. I was thirteen, and I thought that if my characters were Mary-Sues then no one would take me seriously. I bought totally into the popular idea that any woman who had more than two talents was a Mary-Sue. I was convinced that I was better than those other people who had OC’s that I saw as Mary-Sues. I would look at examples of Mary-Sues and try to avoid them, even if they were characters that I personally loved. I didn’t even need to click that link. I still had it bookmarked in my ‘writing’ bookmark folder from seven years ago.

It drove me to change my first ever OC’s. I was thirteen. Thirteen! I was an 8th grader in middle school utterly terrified of people seeing my sexy demon OC or my pretty immortal OC or my cool freedom fighter OC and the first thing they’d think was that they were too good. The culture around (mostly women) original characters needing to be watered down or having to have the character’s (mostly women’s) skills and talents justified were toxic as hell to me, and I’m sure to others.

Seeing this today was a major blast from the past, and I’m so glad that the creator changed their outlook on this whole thing. I hope that disclaimer will ward off another creative eighth-grader before they get tricked into buying into the shame culture that forms around the creation of original characters.

[...]

Even the creator knows the quiz is harmful, and so is the idea of a Mary-Sue.

The point is that young creators who want to make powerful, fun, beautiful, and universe-breaking original characters found this quiz and been led to think there’s something wrong with their characters. That there’s something wrong with them for writing it. This is my personal experience.

And I want to say the experience of being young and writing overpowered characters who are right about everything is a natural process of learning to write. There is nothing wrong with this process. [4]

As someone who used to write Mary Sue’s….it’s never about the character themselves as much as how the canon characters act around them. If the canon characters are ooc without it being purposeful, then like…that’s just not learning yet how to write character relationships well. There’s nothing wrong with having overpowered characters. Go nuts. [5]

Any criticism that is only or disproportionately leveled at female characters is a sexist criticism and should be re-examined. I know published male authors who proudly brag about their work being self-insert fiction and get applauded. I, meanwhile, was afraid to write blondes for years because of the accusations that my MC was just me but better. This test does 2d10 psychic damage to young creators, and the term should be disavowed. [6]

[...] the Mary Sue Litmus Test can be kind of fun even today if you go into it with the viewpoint of “Mary Sue as a trope is misogynistic bullshit and the score doesn’t matter” bc it can be amusing to see where any given character lands on this outdated awful scoring system. I’m personally gonna go score Dean Winchester after I post this.

…or maybe that’s just me. Still. It doesn’t matter, it’s a shitty trope that is essentially meaningless.

If the canon characters are ooc without it being purposeful, then like…that’s just not learning yet how to write character relationships well. [7]

I do think this is worth emphasizing, because my recollection of how the Mary Sue phenomenon was talked about earlier in fandom (I’m talking 80s and 70s), at least some of the criticism was about how the canon characters were handled – how they were often OOC, unusually fixated on the Mary Sue character, “distorted”, etc.

And at the time, I’d say, I was as susceptible as anyone to the idea that this was bad. It took a while to get to the point of thinking… well, why IS this bad? I mean, who does it “hurt”? It’s fanfiction. So what if someone’s writing is really self-indulgent, and the canon characters are unrecognizable to you? If the person’s having fun, it doesn’t necessarily have to appeal to *you*. And if they’re having fun, maybe they’ll keep writing, and reading, and over time their writing will get “better” (in the sense of how it is evaluated/received by others). But while “getting better at writing” may be the goal of some, it doesn’t HAVE to be the goal of everyone who participates in fanfiction. At the end of the day, why does it matter if someone just keeps doing it for fun and never gets “better” at it? Fanfiction is not and does not HAVE to be a pipeline to “better writing” or professional writing. [8]

There are a couple of things that *aren’t* often talked about, when discussing why people in earlier fandom objected to the Mary Sue phenomenon, which I just want to note. (Though, not in a way that means to justify it.)

First – we do say a lot nowadays, that fanfiction is free, and if you don’t like a story, then bail out of it, hit the back-button, no harm, no foul. And that’s true, because of the internet. But, that wasn’t true in the 1970s. The only way to widely share fanfiction in the 70s and 80s was by purchasing paper zines. Usually it was for the cost of printing (and sometimes mailing, unless you bought them at a convention), but you were definitely dropping money on a collection of fanfic, when you could NOT know whether you’d even LIKE all of the stories contained in the zine. It was a gamble, and that certainly made people feel more protective of their time and money. BUT, I also want to point out: every zine had at least one editor, choosing which stories got into the zine. Frankly, it seems like your odds of running across a Mary Sue story in a zine you’d paid for was pretty low… I guess, unless the editor was also the writer of that story, or something.

Second – this doesn’t get into the fact that fandom is often a community, and in the older days, it was often a much more “closed” community (a group, a mailing list, a smaller forum). The original definition of a Mary Sue usually included the idea that this OC would come into the story with canon characters, and all of the canon characters would revolve around her (almost always “her”) [9], she’d be universally loved by them, etc. The only reason this MIGHT be bad is if the writer came to feel a certain sense of “ownership” over the canon characters [10] and “their” attention. Fandom drama absolutely DID exist over this. But the takeaway here should be, “don’t cause drama over ‘ownership’ of canon characters, when they really belong to everyone”. You can avoid others’ takes on them, if you don’t like them; but don’t harass other fans just for doing their own thing.

Anyway, back in the 80s, I had a big friend group in college where we spent almost all of our 4 years creating a giant, sprawling, interconnected group fanfic project, and the whole point we started from was, “ALL of us are writing Mary Sues”. The *explicit* goal was to make your character a bigger, better, cooler version of yourself (whatever that meant to you). We were ALL TIME LORDS. My character was ALSO A JEDI! Like the Doctor we all had companions (sometimes platonic, sometimes an OC/canon char ship), all of whom were taken from various canon properties we liked. Visit any book/show/movie property! Mash ‘em together! Who cares! It was completely over the top, and we had a blast. (It would not surprise me, if we could count it up today, if we wrote half a million words of fanfic, altogether; possibly more, I mean, we had like 20 people writing in this group.) And the Mary Sue test? Yeah, this was early internet days, and we absolutely came across the test later, and took it for all our characters, and the goal was to score as high as possible.

That just basically burned out of me all possible concern over whether it was “good” or “bad” to engage in playing Mary Sues in fandom. Life’s too short, man. Fandom is about fun. If you want it to be a training ground for becoming a professional writer or artist, that’s great, go for it. But that isn’t objectively what fandom is about, and nobody else has to have those goals to be valid. Don’t harsh somebody’s fun just because their OC isn’t to your taste and you aren’t into their stories. We DO have the internet now, and fanfic and fan-art are free. [11]

Links

The test includes links to other essays:

  • Mary Sue Subtypes
  • So, What's a Mary Sue Anyway?, Springhole.net (expanded version, some versions include a 2019 disclaimer
  • How To Write Powerful & Extraordinary Characters Without Being Obnoxious Or Boring
  • Things About Skills, Talents, & Knowledge Writers Need To Know
  • Basic Tips To Improve Your OCs & Fan Characters
  • Tips To Create Better OC Relatives of Canon Characters
  • Basic Tips To Write Better (And More Likeable) Badasses
  • So You Want To Have An Attractive Character?
  • Common, Yet Terrible Character Descriptors - And How To Fix Them (And Write Better Descriptions In General)
  • Describing Your Character: Tips & Advice
  • Tips For Writing Fanfiction With An OC Protagonist
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality: What It Is, And How You Can Avoid It
  • "Is This My Character's Fault?" - A Flowchart
  • Pointlessly Edgy Tropes To Reconsider Using
  • Tips For Writing Dark Stories, Settings, & Characters
  • Basic Tips To Make Better & More Appealing Roleplaying Characters
  • Why People Might Not Want To Roleplay With You

Other Mary Sue Litmus Tests

Fans created many other "Litmus Tests" for their fandoms.

Meta/Further Reading

References

  1. ^ The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test
  2. ^ The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test
  3. ^ officialqueer.tumber
  4. ^ yourocdoeswhat.tumblr
  5. ^ videogamelover99.tumblr
  6. ^ seananmcguire.tumblr
  7. ^ ruffboijuliaburnsides.tumblr
  8. ^ One of the biggest arguments put forth by Paula Smith and her peers (Paula Block, Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Jean Lorrah...) in the 1970s was that Trek fanfiction would NEVER win a Hugo Award and therefore be "respected" in the science fiction world, and that Trek fan fic was a bit immature and should only be used as a stepping stone to better, professional, and for-profit creative endeavors. The assumption was that everyone should be striving for a Hugo, and that amateur Trek writers, by association, were bringing down the writers who were striving for paid writing careers.
  9. ^ Diamonds & Rust is one example.
  10. ^ Jean Lorrah's Epilogue is one example.
  11. ^ eregyrn-falls.tumblr
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