better get my characters tested

[I was polishing off old draft blogposts and came across this--which has recently become rather relevant because I've almost finished Umbrella now and it's becoming clear how the pitfalls of the Mary-Sue are ravaging my characterisation.]

This is the side-effect of wanting to create a strange character who's entertaining for being different--only to wind up enjoying her too much.

I'm just going to think on this for a while because I recently took out some hours of my studying time to write an essay on Mary-Sues, and spent much of that same time wondering about Umbrella Story. (Oh god I really do need a title that doesn't sound dumb when I write about it.)

Right now I'm half-convinced people are going to think Umbrella sucks for the very fact that I grant Ruthenia too many buffs in terms of character power. She gets away with things too often. She's like a free radical that chlorinates all the uniform alkyl groups in her environment. Is it justified by the nature of the content of the story itself, the fact that she must possess such agency if she's to handle the plot I gave her?

Really that's irrelevant if I think of it this way: she might be a Sue for the simple fact that I like her more than most of my other OCs.

How she is a Sue:

If her being the lone main character of Umbrella isn't enough of a factor (no one else comes remotely close in terms of centrality in Umbrella; even in Harry Potter the titular character has friends who enter danger with him), then I'm sure her backstory does. She was orphaned by a somewhat unreasonable law and her parents' martyr-like tendencies, conveniently 1) getting parents out of the way 2) for a reason 3) that "justifies" her hate of the authorities and drives the plot. She is a smarty-pants, a very smart smarty-pants. One could even say she's too smart--she's sixteen and she knows how to put together a steam car. We haven't reached Artemis Fowl proportions, but outside Umbrella I haven't more than two characters who can match her intelligence either. Is it justified by the average intelligence level in Umbrella? I want to think it is--her boss is smarter than her, she has friends as smart as her--but is it too much to give her this sort of intelligence all the same?

Also, to add, she is the "unpopular girl" in class, which means she's an attention-grabber, whether of good or bad. And the "popular kids" dislike her, so she's "sympathetic"! Oh!

All in all, I suppose the family background is incriminating already, but her intelligence and social position top it off. What else? She gets things so easily sometimes. I suppose that's laziness-to-detail-events in play, but I must fix that up. She just...does things that people dislike, and people grumble but people don't actively try to stop her. No. Everyone minds their own business and she goes and does everything she likes. Uh.

Of course I realise I can't possibly change any of these traits without direly spoiling the story. I know I won't have to fret over Sueness if I can make her believably handicapped in other senses, or if I make her interactions realistic.

How she may not be a Sue:

She's a braggart. I'm not sure how much that changes things, but if anything she knows what she's good at and acts like it. She is also rude. But again, while I don't really like or hate these traits (I do think they make an interesting character though), I think they'd make her very annoying to readers. Without doing anything for her Sueness. She is rude, she openly sasses authority, she is rebellious--semi-appealing and very Sue character trait.

I really must do some work.