A way with worlds: 46 - Dark Mary Sue

We can miss creating Dark Mary Sues for the simple reason that we treat the villains, the antagonists, as plot devices. They're like the Big Bosses in videogames - hulking images with a high (whatever) count. This need to make the villain something almost outside of your setting, to contrive a villain, is a gateway for Mary and Gary to happily prance into your story world.

In short, if your villain filled out a resume, and his last job would be listed as "villain", then you have a Mary Sue Gateway waiting to happen.

Dark Mary Sue's actually irritate me more than regular Mary Sues - they seem to lean more towards wish fulfillment, provoke even more excuses, and drag the story down - especially if the hero is just someone for the villain to push around.

THINGS TO WATCH OUT FOR:
Having seen some Dark Mary Sues, I can advise you to be on the lookout for:

• Is the hero constantly outsmarted by the villain? Does he succeed only by luck - and you aren't writing a comedy? Is the hero basically a punching bag?
• Is the villain so charming, suave, debonair, and likable that you wonder why they need an Army of Evil to take over the world when most people probably like them better than whoever is in charge?
• Does the villain have inexhaustible resources? Can their bank account be mixed up with the GNP of major world powers, yet they have no reason to have such wealth?
• Does the villain have a tragic story that grips everyone and makes them really sympathetic despite the fact they commit genocide daily to keep in practice?
• Does the villain's luck run so much in his or her favor you figure they could just WIN the world in a game of Poker and be done with it.?
• Do you hate the villain, but only because he or she is too perfect - is their perfection more annoying than the fact that they use Nuclear Death Rays to decimate cities?

If you see any of these traits, put on your Mary Sue detector and aim it at your villain.

SUMMARY:
Villains can be Mary Sues, and are often more difficult to diagnose as such. Writing realistic antagonists and keeping the signs of Mary Sue-ism in mind can help.

A Way with Worlds is hosted at:

• fanfiction.net

• lit.org

• sffworld.com

The complete works are archived at the Way With Worlds archive.
A German translation is in the works at Christian Spliess's Page