Sympathetic Sue

The Mary Sue who wants your sympathy. Like most other subtypes, they can be male or female, but generally tends towards the latter since women are perceived to be more sensitive and vulnerable. She'll usually be mopey and depressed while angsting all the time.
Please note that you can create an angsty character who isn't a Mary Sue. Even wangst can have its place in good fanfiction, if done right. An unhappy history and a gloomy personality aren't the only things that make a Sympathetic Sue.
A good angsty character's emotional pain is never stylish, and does not necessarily involve weeping and wailing. People deal with pain in many different ways, usually by becoming trapped in one of the Five Stages of Grief. If they do resort to self-harm such as cutting themselves, it's not glamorized. And like most normal people with a tragic history, they will talk about it as little as possible. If they do talk to somebody they trust about it, they will do so infrequently and reluctantly. Generally there is a single core reason for their angst, although other bad experiences may stem from it.
Their feelings of guilt will make sense, usually because of psychological scarring. Perhaps, just perhaps though, they were responsible for something that happened to someone else and are dead on with their remorse. They might have tried to do something to relieve the pain in the past, even if it failed. And canon characters do other things as well as comfort the angsty character. Even after the angst is gone there's still a story to be told.
Keep in mind that having a tragic background does not define the character as a Sympathetic Sue. Any trauma is a good reason for any character - or any living person, for that matter - to suffer some form of depression. And your character can have more than one tragic past event without being a Sue, although the more you have, the harder it will be to write them realistically. But Sympathetic Sue will have suffered hugely.
Apart from all that angst, there are all the regular Mary Sue things: Authorial intrusion, plot favoritism, unnatural magnetism, and such often also with a lack of perceivable flaws and a strong tie to the author. It's just that there's something for her to be overly and usually unrealistically depressed about.
But Sympathetic Sue's unhappy past doesn't really match up with how much she angsts over it. No matter how many traumatic events her history involves, the angst is still not portrayed realistically. Often, it doesn't even have any real permanent implications; it's just a reason to gain the attention of a true love who will spend most of the story trying to make her feel better about it. Essentially, it's not an important part of the story, or the character. It's just there to make people feel sorry for her.
She'll talk about her pain constantly and as soon as possible. In real life, some people are very open about their emotional pain, but those with the deepest trauma have it because they keep their pain so close to their chest. A problem shared is a problem halved, people! But Sue's sharing will simply double it.
Sue often blatantly ignores all the positives in her life. Self-blame is often irrational, but Sympathetic Sue feels guilty to its most extreme state, blaming herself for her parents dying in a plane crash, and not just feeling mild guilt either, but wallowing in it deeply and extensively for years on end to get attention. The other characters will never get tired of trying to cheer her up, even if it's totally out of character for their personality. If they're not near her, they'll probably be discussing how sorry they feel for her.
She'll never attempt to relieve the emotional pain herself - other characters do all the legwork for her. Any character who doesn't try to help gets chewed out or portrayed as a jerk. And most of all, the story comes to an end as soon as the angst is gone.
Pairs well with Jerk Sue, since angst can fuel anger and acting out sympathetically. She generally shows up in Hurt/Comfort fanfics.
Category:Sue and Stu Classifications