YMMV / The Quintessential Mary-Sue

• Alternate Character Interpretation: In the end, most of the cast get this:
  • Thanks to losing her memories and identity, Mary-Sue’s original personality becomes very ambiguous. It’s possible to take her at face value as someone who truly cared about everyone and really opposed her alternate self on moral grounds, or she could have been as narcissistic as the current Mary-Sue and just nicer about it (making their confrontation hypocritical, since the characteristic trait of all Sues is that none of the negative consequences of their actions are their fault). Plus it’s an open question whether she would have truly ruled benevolently or become just as power-mad even without the Faceless One’s intervention. Whether the Faceless One was right that she regretted her responsibility is another matter altogether. It’s also not clear whether she ceased to exist completely upon death, or went to Heaven. Note that the writer doesn’t actually have a problem with people interpreting her unironically, and even admits that she is kind of the Hero Antagonist to her corrupted self’s Villain Protagonist.
  • Whether the Faceless One was telling the truth in Chapter 3 changes their motivation into either an Unwitting Instigator of Doom who truly thought they were doing the right thing if yes, or an utterly irredeemable wannabe tyrant if no.
  • What exactly happens to God is not made clear, since we never actually see Heaven. This means that Mary-Sue could have successfully overthrown Him, or possibly just deluded herself while Heaven is unchanged. One reader even came up with a detailed theory on the comments to Chapter 3 postulating that everything in Chapter 3 is Mary-Sue’s Dying Dream and that the world went back to normal without her influence.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: By design, Mary-Sue is the least interesting but also most focused character. The seer and the Faceless One, the Philosphites and Amazinines, the humans whom Mary-Sue victimizes, Saint Peter, and even Mary-Sue’s original personality are all more interesting than her, since they are characters who actually have proper roles in the plot instead of twisting it to look cool like Mary-Sue does.

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