“What can I say about Mary-Sues? I love them. Many of you have the long-held belief that Mary- Sues are bad, the sign of an inexperienced writer or a pre-teen bookworm who spends too much time daydreaming about living in the worlds of the books she reads. Well... you're mostly right. Many people write Mary-Sues for their first story. It's a good way to get a feel of descriptions (even if it's just her appearance and what clothes she's wearing) but it's not so good if you have a fragile ego...With my C2 I hope to raise awareness of just how big a demographic the Mary-Sue writer is, and to push for it to be accepted as a fiction style of its own without the flames and loathing that these stories are usually given. So subscribe to my C2, by all means. Read the stories. Giggle at their clichès and overuse of the nickname "Mione". But after the laughter has died down, spare a thought for the young, naive writer who is creating these works, using a tried and true method: the Mary-Sue.” (Sharap’n)
The user gets at an important point. Many Mary Sue authors are just starting out, sometimes the stories are outlandish or even laughable, but not all of them and, even if they are, readers don’t all necessarily dislike this. Sometimes it’s nice to see an original character get a happy (if not improbable) ending. A key difference between Ebony and Christiana, for example, is that Christiana is not so perfect that she isn’t relatable, especially to a younger audience. “She had never been kissed – had never even had so much as a love interest – due to her status as an outcast for so long… she felt like she had friends for the first time in her life,” writes the author. And though it may be unrealistic for a young woman to be taken in by strangers and given a job on her first day in London (HermioneGranger4343), Christiana finding a community and a sense of belonging is not merely a wish-fulfillment on the side of the author, but a yearning that is likely echoed by many readers.