My thoughts on writing an effective Marty Stu archetypical character

A long time ago, I watched a critique on all of the recent superhero movies, but it especially focused on Superman. I'd love to link to the video, but I can't remember what it's called or where to find it anymore.

Before I watched the video, I couldn't tangibly explain to anyone what made Superman an interesting hero. I mean, he's cool, because he can punch holes in the Moon or whatever, but I didn't really know how one might go about writing a story that made him an interesting character by himself.

The video that I watched though changed that for me. It explained by way of showing one especially good storyline, called Superman: Red Son. In this alternate universe, Superman is born in Russia and he becomes an agent of the KGB, fighting for communism. However, despite his incredible power, he grows to develop an incorruptible moral code, and uses his might to destroy fascists. 

One day, he says to himself "Humans cannot rule over themselves" and he takes the place as the supreme ruler of Earth. Has Superman ever done that in other storylines? Not that I know of, and not very convincingly. He imposes Communism upon the entire world, using his godlike hearing and incredible power to be a literal Big Brother figure all around the world. If you break the law, he knows.

What's interesting about this story is that Superman goes from being a boring goody two-shoes who always does the right thing to a terrifying dictator, but one who has his heart in the right place. He just wants to eliminate crime and make Earth a perfect society.

Ah, but human nature, it's such a pesky thing. The more he tries to control the citizenry, the more the might of America comes to stand against him. He can simply destroy them in the blink of an eye with his awesome powers, but at what cost? Most of the citizenry fears him, but believes he has their best interests at heart. If he were to simply eradicate America and establish a worldwide communist order, everyone would revolt.

See any similarities to Cryopod yet?

For me, one of the challenges that I think most writers face when it comes to writing an effective, convincing, interesting Mary Sue/Marty Stu character, is that while the character can be as powerful as you want, most authors fail to write about the moral challenges they face.

What good is ruling a world and leading a perfect society if everyone hates you? What if they all begin to fight your every move? You can't just kill them all. You can't just change their minds. If you lose the hearts of the people, you're no longer all-powerful. If you brainwash them, you might as well be leading a society of robots.

Jason is a walking cheat code. He has all the power in the universe, for the most part, and the ability to change the fabric of reality. But even with all of that power, he's not actually omnipotent. He possesses a fatal human flaw, which is that his mind is limited. He doesn't know all and see all, which he is trying to make up for with clones and worldwide surveillance.

But even if he could know-all and see-all, he can't simply just remake society how he wants and kill the demons and Volgrim off. Human nature dictates that humans always need an enemy. If all of their natural enemies are gone, they grow more picky, and start to look upwards. Perhaps they will begin to see Jason himself as the enemy. After all, can you really trust a guy whose hand you've never shaken? One with that much power?

And there are other conflicts too, such as his own human nature. Despite all his bravado, he's an easily angered and easily confused human. He's not especially smart, even with an all-knowing crown slapped on his head. Umi is a far smarter being, a supercomputer that does not possess any of his weaknesses and might in fact be able to destroy him easily. If Jason were to be at her level, the questions he would face would be different, but still existent. Once you are a godlike, all knowing, all seeing, and all doing figure, what is left? Do you really care about the lives of ants? What is your purpose?

In the end, to me, writing a successful Mary Sue character revolves around giving them whatever powers you like, then writing around their existing flaws. Everything has a flaw. And, I'm not referring to arbitrary flaws either, like Superman and Kryptonite (The most boring thing you can think of), but something built into the meat of the character themselves.

If you can pull that off, you too can write an effective Marty Stu.