I like this place already, although I don't entirely agree. My take on the classic 'pink' Mary-Sue is this: Mary-Sues are written by daydreamers and people that fantasize that are stupid enough to put pointless fantasies online for the world to see. This is inexcusable- I may enjoy drawing a dress with silver embroidery, but I will not punish my readers with a few paragraphs on the dress.

Of course the ACMSES has a different definition of Sue than the PPC, but I wanted to contribute.

The Mary Sue wants to fix something. The idea is that the Sue will do anything, anything at all, to ensure that the author's ideal of a perfect version of the fandom is achieved. Usually, the ACMSES just leaves them alone and groans (unless they get out of the author's control, in which we step in).

A Sue exists to "fill the hole" in the author's perception or heart.

Theories are fun. And this is a good theory. I like it.

Perhaps Sues also gain some energy by being acknowledged by others? Not only the Suethor, but hapless readers of fanfiction? Reviewers and the like?

Or perhaps Sues are autonomous entities--maybe they can exist without authors, but must possess them in order to invade canon. It might not be the Suethors' faults after all. On the other hand, we still need to attack the abominable creatures that are Sue.

One of the most pleasing experiences of my life was to persuade a Suethor that her character was, in fact, a Sue, and had horribly mucked with canon besides. She took it down, and I haven't checked since, but she said she was rewriting it to improve. Small wonders, hey?

As I said before, sues usually have short lives and suethors are like life support systems for their creations and also about reformed sues.

In canon, authors grant life to their creations but suethors create but unable to give the sues good characterization nor a normal life span. These kind of flaws made the sues suffer. Worse, the bond can be broken if the suethor disowned the sue and/or never acknowledged as her creation. The amount of glitter in her body is a hint of how strong the bond is. While this sounds good at first but the drawbacks overweight the benefits. Broken powerful bonds is lethal to the sue, usually death or force her into a comatose state. The bond is double edged sword for sues.

As for reformed sues, the bond is severed from the suethor which should make them really weak. The ones with strong levels of glitter are impossible since they are too much of a hassle to handle. Sues can be reformed into normal beings even without having rely on the bond. They just have receive treatments but there's one problem, glitter is like their blood so trying to remove it could be fatal until medical research provided us a way to cure them of their suedom.

All of this talk about Sues as parasites reminds me of this fic I'm currently rereading called "A Sue's Story". Ever hear of it?

It's set in the Harry Potter continuum, but based some around some OCS who work with handing Sues. It's a different way of looking at it, so I don't know how some people will handle it...

So check it out, that is, if you want to.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1811995/1/ASuesStory

I find this idea pretty good, it completely explains non canon sues. However, Canon Sues are not quite the same problem - they ARE actually canon, so they are only resembling a Sue in behaviour, but do not share the same mechanics of energy stealing. In easy words, Canon Sues do not feed on canon energy, because they are in canon.

Good idea within the PPC, but don't forget that a lot of people consider canon Sues to exist. We're just not allowed to PPC canon.

See, I always thought Mary Sues existed because people like to write fanfiction, and some of them are really bad at it. And that we kill them because we don't like seeing stories about our favorite canons that are really bad. And that we made up the whole thing about them Killing The Canon to have an in-universe reason to do so, and because it makes for a good story...

--VM, being the polar opposite of helpful!

To be honest, I don't see the 'need'. I mean, why do 'scientific theories' need a reason? You might as well be asking for the motives behind why the Earth was created - which is a religious question, usually.

It would also create an additional ethical complication in that one could argue that the 'Sues are merely struggling to survive, casting agents in the light of genocidal murderers. I don't think that's quite what Jay and Acacia meant when they started this.

Still, if you want to think of it that way, that's up to you. I don't think I'll adopt it as part of my "headcanon", though.

Though I like the part where it says Sues are feeding on canon characters, I don't agree that Sues need to feed on canon characters because their authors can't publish their work officially. There's plenty of (officially) published fiction where there are Sues in the story.