Post by Joliette Thorne on Aug 26, 2008 8:37:43 GMT -5
A Mary-Sue (or Marty-Sue, for males), in the most general sense of the term, is a character whom is actually a method for the player to live/work out thier ooc self-esteem issues/personal fantasies in fiction. These characters are generally quite unbelievable, both in themselves and thier action. IC/OOC crossover is obvious, and it's all about getting a specific type of attention that he player craves for themselves
Encyclopedia Dramatica has an admittedly brutal but quite realistic expansion of this definition here:
www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Mary_Sue
How To Spot A Mary Sue: Common Traits
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CommonMarySueTraits
The following article expounds on the above. Sadly, the source page was not the original, and could not cite who the author is.
So, to whomever wrote this: thanks, and may your wisdom drop like an H-bomb on the World Called Mary-Sue.. er.. Hollow.
The RPG Mary Sue
By now you've probably heard the term "Mary Sue." The term, not gender-specific, was created in satire by a Star Trek fan fiction writer, and referred mostly to the phenomenon of self-insertion, but also some of the more unpleasant aspects of self-insertion characters.
Reading between the lines of any fan fiction discussion on "Mary Sue" will show that the real problem is not self-insertion, as the authors will tell you there are some enjoyable, entertaining self-insertion characters. The real problem is the plethora of annoying traits that commonly accompany these characters and makes them unbearable.
Recently, "Mary Sue" has come to have a secondary (and perhaps more accurate) meaning in RPG, referring not to self-insertion but solely to characters with those particular traits and a few more that only apply to role-playing.
In RPGs, Mary Sueism is less about torturing readers with the writer's own daydreams and more about developing a character for one's own personal wish fulfillment without stopping to think about their reception in a game full of people with better things to do than stroke someone else's ego. This is not the irritating but harmless fluff of a writer contorting the canon characters into worship around their avatar. If you don't like a story, you don't have to read it. But in an RPG, the other characters belong to other players, and MS’s are more than an annoyance. At best, they wait for someone to notice them, wither up, and die a natural, merciful death when no one pays them the desired amount of attention. But at worst, they blunder into the game, insert themselves recklessly into any and all situations, throw off planned storylines, and force moderators to clean up after their messes until they are asked to leave. At least in RPG Mary Sues usually come on pretty strong in their bios, and if you’re paying attention, you can catch them before they do any harm.
Mary Sues have poor character development as a symptom of a larger problem. Their creator doesn't care about the game they're joining. They do not care whether everyone else has a good time playing. They don't care about where they fit in the storyline. They don't respect the ideas of others and they don't respect the vision and purpose of the game. They don't read the rules and they don't watch the storylines. They never read anything that doesn't pertain to their character and have no idea what's happening elsewhere in the game. They only care about their own character and what they have imagined for them. They are not open to any development of their character that they haven't already planned on. Everything around them exists solely for their entertainment. RPG groups are teams, and like any team, people who only want to work for their own ends are detrimental. MS players are only in it for themselves, to the point that they don't care if anyone else gets any gratification from the game.
Mary Sues tend to be archetypal, the sex kitten, the bitch, the nice girl, the psychopathic killer, the tough guy, the super-villain, the angsty loner. While almost all characters submitted to an RP are types, MS’s are overstatements of the type, as if the concept of what they are is more important than who they are. The archetypes may overlap, and all Mary Sues may not pigeonhole easily, but they will be presented in extremes--not just beautiful, but more beautiful than a list of Hollywood actresses, not just tough but so tough she never loses a fight. These kinds of extremes are not only annoyingly vain, but unrealistic, and prevent people from identifying with and thus caring about the character. Even if they choose a negative-type character, they never come with a down side. The bitch is admired and respected; the psychopathic killer never gets caught.
MS characters also have a tendency to be amazingly accomplished, basically good at just about everything. They have numerous hobbies in addition to their schooling or the full time job they never seem to be at (usually modeling), are good cooks, gifted artists, computer whizzes, and have excellent singing voices. Often they are also skilled fighters, or genius prodigies, or blessed with incredible powers and near-total control over those powers, often at a very young age. MS characters rarely admit to ignorance on any subject. In fact, if the knowledge is relevant, Mary Sue will be an expert, and infallible at that. Their special abilities will pop up randomly whenever needed, and fade into the background when they aren’t.
Conversely, Mary Sues don't have serious character flaws. What flaws they do have are not really flaws ("she's a perfectionist" or "he’s too caring"), meaningless ("she used to have teenage acne"), softened ("he has a quick temper, but it's always over soon and he never holds a grudge") or outright contradicted ("she's manipulative and cold but everyone she knows is smitten with her").
When they manage to have an overwhelming flaw, like insanity or emotional problems, the flaw is never debilitating, or even coherently explored. They rarely have a good explanation in the history or personality for such character faults and don't carry them through in the character's bio, or don't research the issue before they saddle their character with it. The flaw is only there to pop up when it is a convenient excuse for angst or troublemaking. When there's a possibility that it could limit the character or keep them out of the action, suddenly it's not a problem.
The creator of a Mary Sue is clumsily trying to make you like their character and interact with them the way they think you should. So they unconsciously describe the MS in terms of how other people see them or how they imagine other people should interact with them. They describe the character’s beauty in terms of how desired she is, the character's goodness by how unfailingly nice they are to others. If the character is charming, their ability to charm is described with how good they are at making others bend to their will. And they will make certain that when you read their bio, you only see people reacting to them the way they want you to. Their bio is there to prove to you how great Mary Sue is, and to act as a guide for how they expect you to receive them.
One of the ultimate rules of the classic Mary Sue is that everyone loves Mary Sue because Mary Sue is an all-around wonderful person. The corollary is that villains are immediately identifiable because they hate Mary Sue, usually for no real reason. More simply put, Mary Sue is never rejected by anyone, and if she is, it's because that person is bad, not because Mary Sue is an annoying pain in the ass. So in an MS bio, all of Mary Sue's interactions with others are on his or her terms. No one ever pushes them away or falls out of love with them because of something they did. Just the opposite, in an MS bio there are never any repercussions for any of Mary Sue's actions, and everyone around them behaves very much as their creator wishes them to, regardless of whether their behavior is realistic. No matter how poorly a Mary Sue treats someone, no matter how awful a person they are, no one calls them on it or shuns them for it.
In the world of the ever-popular Mary Sues, even psychopathic killers have no trouble getting a date, no matter how obviously insane or threatening their bio says they appear. No one likes being rejected so few people are interested in seeing it happen to their characters, but there is a difference between not liking rejection and making sure that the only people who dislike your character are 2-dimensional villains.
Some players try to get around Mary Sueism by having their character suffer endlessly, thus inventing the archetype of the angsty MS. Often an angsty MS will have terrible guilt for something that isn't their fault, like a death they could not have possibly prevented--conversely, a Mary Sue that is guilty of terrible things will feel absolutely no guilt whatsoever; Mary Sues are always extremes. Rather than actually allowing their character to do something bad that they might justifiably feel guilt for (something that might make the audience not like them anymore) they contort them in agony over something unreasonable.
Sometimes, Mary Sues have horrific backgrounds, like coming from an abusive home but without showing any signs of being violent themselves and being perfectly functional without therapy (even actively shunning therapy). The background is only there for potential angst, and the character's player has no intention of getting them any help or allowing them to be 'fixed', of course unless the suffering becomes inconvenient to them, at which point their character will experience a miraculous turn-around.
For all the reasons above, Mary Sue bios are typically rife with poor plotting and contrived, unrealistic situations because it’s the only way to maintain the unrealistic traits of a Mary Sue. For instance, Mary Sue has a beautiful singing voice and dreams of stardom. She participates in a competition, wins, but is attacked afterwards by a gang of jealous girls, and thus decides not to pursue her singing career. It is literally unthinkable that Mary Sue just loses the competition and becomes discouraged; the thought didn't even cross her player's mind. Maintaining the character's perfection is paramount so instead of allowing her to be realistically imperfect, someone we could all identify and sympathize with, her creator decides to persecute her for her perfection, inventing 2-dimensional villains who hate Mary Sue for no good reason and whose only purpose is to pound Mary Sue for being so wonderful and then disappear from the back-story entirely.
The problem with these kinds of situations and plotlines isn’t just that they're unrealistic, but that they exist only to make certain that Mary Sue always comes out the winner, at the expense of any realism. These kinds of improbable situations and glaring plot holes are Mary Sueism in action, the only possible method of sustaining the character. This also means that whenever a character like this is put into play and dealing with people they can’t control and conform around their wishes, everything falls apart.
Bios are a very subjective thing, and not all moderators have a problem with Mary Sues. And yes, maybe you have a character that fits the MS label that you think is just fine, and that you’ve had compliments on from other players. Does that mean you cannot improve? Keep in mind that Mary Sueism isn't something one does intentionally. As a matter of fact, Mary Sues happen because of not thinking something through entirely, a character planned auto-pilot. And everyone has been guilty of it at some point. So while it's harder to avoid it, it's not impossible or even very difficult. Of course one article isn't going to cover all the problems of RPG Mary Sueism, or the individual types, although hopefully it should give a pretty good picture of what the major issues are and how to avoid them.
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COMING SOON: THE HOLLOW MARY-SUE TEST