Mary Sues!

[Belle Vie]

Well, I'm not so into vampire roleplays, anyway. But, I really hate when people just have to be /perfect/ when it's .. impossible to begin with.

I joined a roleplay on another site, long time ago, and some kids character was a ten year old. Yeah, he acted like he was freaking seventeen. He might've even tried to, er, 'make a move' on some of the ladiessss.. the older ones.

Pretty sucky ass roleplay if you ask me, but, yeah, I understand.

He/she was probably just really young and too immature to understand the whole point of not having Mary/Gary Sues.
:/

Well, good luck on your next roleplays. [:

P.S.
You could've also just like, noob posted a wonderful. *i just choped ur head 0ff!!!111111* type deal. xD

[diabolicalxdamsel]

As much as I dislike Twilight altogether, we must remember Edaward and Bella are definitely not the only sues out there. Jane Austen's main characters are pretty much sues.

They all rebel against the rules, they are all broke that end up wedded rich, they all get a happy ending.

And what about movies? GEEZ! Movies are full of them. Even good ones. C'mon Ferris Bueler is a Stu. He's handsome, get away with everything, does whatever he wants, is adored by all his classmates and half the town and has a pretty girlfriend.

[Uchiha Min-no-ko]

Bond. James Bond.

I don't watch many movies. And you know what's even more annoying about Mary-Sueists? When they insist that they have all the say about whether your character dies. And I think most of the time they only kill off villains or characters of the opposite gender.

Jealousy takes on a whole new meaning all of a sudden. D:

[Xeynar]

Doomsday. Wow. You know Doomsday fits almost every category except cuteness.

Think about it. Has no friends/allies, He gets stronger at a rapid rate without having to do anything. He's immortal. He instantly becomes immune to something after being hit by it. And lastly, he adapts to whomever he's fighting in order to specifically kill them in whatever particular way it takes to kill them. Wow, what was DC thinking?

And then there's his Marvel counterpart: Galactus. Same stuff, basically, except he can give minor versions of his power to other people, plus he can telepathically transport an entire galaxy through time and space. Oh and did I mention that he literally eats planets to increase his power? Geez, he's more powerful than God for Christ's sake.

[TheDeceiverGod]

Any character that was created without proper care given to his/her childhood or upbringing drives me crazy.

I don't care what your character is, I don't care how old your character is, I don't care what gender, what species, what sexual orientation, what color, genre or ice cream flavor your character is. Please Please Please give your character a decent back story. No one is interesting if they don't have a past. I can understand that some people want to sort of play our the character's past and development in the context of the role play but for God's Sake don't you think if your girl was born with the power to control fire it would've Affected her a little between birth and age X?

It drives me up walls and then down the other side. I mean I'm not just taking about your traditional Gary Sue or Mary Sue or whatever, I'm taking about ANY character that was created with out care as to how their abilities, supernatural or otherwise, would've affected their personalities.

Now maybe I'm just the type that gets hung up on personalities because I'm sort of Psychology head, but it just makes me nutty when something doesn't sit right about a character. When a character is Too much like a person and not enough like a Character. I mean I can understand the urge to sort of give yourself an alternate life and an alternate past and new persona and all that, I even do it, but I do it to the extent that if I was that person and had lived that life, than there would be events in my past I would draw on, and these events would color my decisions even if I didn't know that's what was making me choose the left rather than the right.

Particularly characters who 'realize' or 'discover' something with no provocation or precipitating event. Either you realize you're a brainwashed Nazi killer vampire robot squid when they're brainwashing you, or when something makes you realize it! You don't just wake up one day and between brushing your teeth and having breakfast go 'hey I think I'm a brainwashed Nazi killer vampire robot squid,' and go off and have adventures.

And that's another thing that drives me nutty, characters that don't recognize that what they're doing is out of the ordinary. I mean either you're used to have adventures, and you're past reflects that and it colors your demeanor and persona, or you're not used to having adventures and some point between destroying Dr. Von Killenstien's doom machine and having your house blown up you realize that suddenly something is very different in your life.

I mean I don't know about you guys but if tomorrow I woke up and some evil organization had murdered my family and I was being carted off to some super secure secret military base, I'd first and foremost want to know what was going on, not pick up a gun and start shooting people I thought weren't on my side. Personally I don't even know I'd know how to shoot a gun accurately, and I'd rather want some time to practice before I went out and started blowing zombie heads off, particularly if those zombies wanted to Eat me, I like not being eaten!

There's nothing wrong with putting yourself into an RP, there's something wrong with putting yourself in and RP and behaving like you're in an RP, you should either behave like your you and all this crazy zombie-mad scientist-evil government related plot is happening to you, or you should take yourself a step back, develop a character that has a full history of experiences to relate to, and behave like those plot events are happen to Him.

[Aerithcultice]

Mary Sues/ Gary Sues... yeah. I tend to avoid any person who roleplays them if only because there are some people whose characters just never get any better. Roleplays tend to lose their appeal whenever an opposing character is able to do everything, when that happens, I tend to just tell them to go and write their own story since that is what they are seemingly trying to do and Zhelir Darkfall, I completely agree with that list that you made, those sort of characters make me want to close down my computer and just back away slowly.

[Safisan]

A writer with skill can get away with a katana, or naming the character after himself, or even... Pastel colored hair *shudders*, alas, most roleplayers with skill won't do any of those. Leaving the Mary Sues to those with no love for roleplaying, those heretics who are far, far too used to killing at the push of a button - "omfgz0orzkx!1!!! i r leet!!1!! heilou pwnz0orz1!!!1!" Yeah, those. (I mean no disrespect to real Halo players, I needed an example.) I may not be an expert roleplayer, hell, I'm barely a new one, but I still know a little better than that just from using common sense. So them being new isn't that great an excuse, there's the roleplay academy, after all.

I recall trying to roleplay when I was like, 10 or 11, I came up with a half elf that was just *so* awesome with a sword and *so* damn fast on his feet, he couldn't be hit, add to that he was the greatest archer in the land, he had a perfect build and height and well... I made a Harry Poo :/, it's mainly the idea of drawing attention to how cool your character is, which is more common in new roleplayers, but still, I've seen older roleplayers (not here :O) that made well... A 2,000 year old vampire that had a touch-you-and-die-no-questions-asked power...

[Xeynar]

Safisan is right. It is common for new players to get their character ideas from some other anime/story/game they like because, being new, they don't know what a Mary Sue is yet, and can't help but make them. They tend to make sure their character is acknowledged as "cool" or "feared" because big time characters in their inspiring anime/etc is regarded as such. It is also common for new people to use photobucket links or pics to fill the typical "Appearance" field of a character profile. Don't get me wrong, some pictures are rather appropriate, particularly in an Anime or Video Game based roleplay, or when playing a canon character. But to use a picture for every single character? Nothing against pictures, I use them myself, but I also include a description underneath it, sometimes with minor changes to what the picture is portraying. Sometimes, I just search for a picture I like, then just type a description of it without inlcuding the picture at all. My point is, it can be rather easy to tell how new a person is based on how they make their characters, among other factors. Those people shouldn't be blamed because they are new and will likely develope more into what is commonly thought of as a good roleplayer. It is the ones who have been here for extended lengths of time and their supposed skills never change, their characters are usually cookie cutter at best, and they never develop any writing skills; they are the ones to worry about.

[Safisan]

Indeed, the new ones are still soft on the skull... You can bash some sense into them XD, it's the ones that are older and believe they are allowed to be omnipotent simply because it's a gifted school rp. Pictures tick me off, I'll admit it, it's just personal taste though. It's just that, you're going to roleplay in text, we'll be imagining everything you do as we read and to put a picture in my head kinda messes that up, much like pictures in a book. That and, anime/manga/whatever characters shouldn't belong anywhere outside their series, and related roleplays; here I am, trying to roleplay with somebody who insists on being Naruto for a vampire rp!

As for their skills, well... I guess I wouldn't mind seeing the same character on a *few* rps, but it really isn't that tough to make a new one for every rp, unless you've been watching t.v. nonstop all your life, you can probably make a non-Sue character. It also helps you fit into the general context of the rp a little better; I have a character, Lewis Wells, I could probably use him for any rp that involved powers, yet... Because I've developed a personality for him, habits and quirks, I'd feel like I'm playing the same rp on every thread. Now to finish, what did you say? Writing skills? Ah, I'm guilty of overusing words at times, but I think it's pretty easy to cook up a 2-3 paragraph post, which seems to be the average here. On the other hand, when you factor in that you kinda have to godmod during lovey-dovey and fighting scenes, well... That's where breaking into roleplaying can become tough, newer/ignorant roleplayers are used to the character being God and don't care if you don't want your well-constructed character to die, they have the power to rip your heart out from just thinking it, and dammit they're gonna use it! Back to their writing skills, sorry, most lack punctuation and grammar, which they might get away with if the content were any good, though I'm afraid "then i walk up to u n use my sage rasengan that kills ur guy wif a big boom" doesn't qualify as good, or even interesting.

[Mindscrew Min-Min]

Ah, the dreaded Mary Sue...I remember some pretty bad Sues in my day. I once encountered an angsty, purple-haired aristocrat girl who, despite having the perfect life and relationship and a generally amazing life, with all the money anyone could ask for and then some, was filled with a ridiculous amount of misery because of being violated by an obsessed stalker. (A few of us in the thread suspected that she also played the stalker. It was never proven, but it seems very likely.)

And the thing is, even after playing the character for nine months, she was still annoyingly Sueish. The worst part was the contradictions--she could switch from chaste and innocent to downright sadistic, from misanthropist to humanitarian, in the blink of an eye. Oh, and did I mention that she invents her own super-deadly-and-powerful-curses that people with much more experience in sorcery could never hope to invent? (Luckily, one of the thread-mod's characters jumped in and made something up about similar curses already being in use, thus saving the day and preventing a giant hole from erupting in the universe's logic.)

...Finally I got tired of it and decided to mess with her, so I had my rude, crude, cannibalistic, bottom-of-the-social-hierarchy character seduce her character's uncle (and miraculously succeed, much to her character's dismay, as she didn't like having a freak in the family...ah, good times, good times.)

So, besides just being nostalgic and ranting about my past with that post, I'd just like to say that I really hate those angsty, attention-stealing Sues. Other people have characters, too, who have more interesting things to do than sit around and angst all day. So could we all kindly move the spotlight away from the brain-numbing emos with technicolor hair.

[ExiledfromJudgement]

While I was in ot chat the other day I recently came across this:

"Kimi is a 150 year old vamp, looking 16. She finds sunlight irritating, but doesn't burn or sparkle. She has soft brown, layered hair and slightly asian features. She's only half-veggie, so don't annoy her much."

As soon as she went in character everyone died out laughing and began to bother her until she went to the bar.
I then looked up her personality...

"Kimi is cold and serious, verging on complete and total bitch to non-vampires, human and shifter alike. Her attitude ranges from simply ignoring you to humiliating you, depending on how her first impression of you. One shot is all you get. She uses her talents to her advantage, every time.
Kimi is a completely different person if you are lucky enough to be a vampire. Away from human and shifter's eyes, she is a good friend, bouncy and loves a good laugh.
While hanging around Vampiric friends in public, she is quiet, often glaring at anyone who dares to even look."

Vampire, emo, etc. Someone kill twilight now please.
Anyone else seen the south park episode about vampires? It is so true...

[Xeynar]

While I was in ot chat the other day I recently came across this:

"Kimi is a 150 year old vamp, looking 16. She finds sunlight irritating, but doesn't burn or sparkle. She has soft brown, layered hair and slightly asian features. She's only half-veggie, so don't annoy her much."

As soon as she went in character everyone died out laughing and began to bother her until she went to the bar.
I then looked up her personality...

"Kimi is cold and serious, verging on complete and total bitch to non-vampires, human and shifter alike. Her attitude ranges from simply ignoring you to humiliating you, depending on how her first impression of you. One shot is all you get. She uses her talents to her advantage, every time.
Kimi is a completely different person if you are lucky enough to be a vampire. Away from human and shifter's eyes, she is a good friend, bouncy and loves a good laugh.
While hanging around Vampiric friends in public, she is quiet, often glaring at anyone who dares to even look."

Vampire, emo, etc. Someone kill twilight now please.
Anyone else seen the south park episode about vampires? It is so true...

Wow. Just. Wow.

And this, ladies and gents, is why I DON'T roleplay in the chatroom. Too many bad memories of Furcadia (if you've played before then you should know exactly what I mean).

[Xantara Avari]

Hmm, didn't know there was actually a NAME for these people. Luckily I haven't come across too many of them as I stick to forum RPs and avoid chat-like environments like the plague. I like to take my time when I write so speed is practically impossible for me. The long wait between posts gives me time to get distracted and come back with a fresh mind.

Anyway, I'd like to tell a tale of a supposedly 20 year old girl who I believed was brainwashed through homeschooling. Now, I'm not saying homeschooling is bad, just saying this particular girl was... less than socially aware. In her mind, an RP could exist without physics (which, logically is impossible as you need gravity and other forces to survive). She was convinced that an arrow could fly perfectly straight through high turbulence winds to strike a dragon (which was moving in order to create these great winds with its wings) in the eye.

This is but one tragic tale that spanned back many years. She thought she was better than everyone else because she'd been RPing longer. It was by a great miracle that she decided to listen to my pleadings. She had been RPing for many more years than I, yet she decided to give me a shining ray of hope. A hope that perhaps old dogs CAN learn new tricks and change their ways. Unfortunately, that hope was tarnished by her insistence to argue a point to death, convinced she was right when the rest of the forum was against her.

To this day I still wonder if she had perhaps made a fool out of all of us. Playing the stubborn elitist like a pied pipper, sowing mayhem and destruction in her wake just because she could. Another part of me wondered, like many others, if she understood half the things she said. She seemed to twist her words to give them a different meaning, contridicting herself within the same paragraph time and time again. Many from that place now turn to anger at the mere mention of her name, suppressed memories bubbling up like pus in an infected wound.

I may never know why she said the things she did. Why she boldly spit the faces of many a RPer and told us we were the boxes. The sheep so mislead by our attention to detail. I wonder if she still haunts the drama-filled forums, preying on innocent newbies in an attempt to corrupt their minds. To turn them into mindless mary-sues with no regards to the consequences of their actions and set them loose upon the chat rooms and forums of the internet.

However, I digress as my words are most bitter. I brought this "story" to your attention because I believe that those older players that think they know everything can be retaught to see the error of their ways. It would be a very delicate and time-consuming endeavor, but very much worth it. How would one do so I am still uncertain of, but I believe forgiveness, calm, and kindness could play a big part in it. Who knows, the person I spoke of may, at one point, change as people often do.

[kalmatos]

Sorry to disturb this thread, but i was wondering from the people in this thread -who will be my critics- will think that a 16 year old boy who is on a cruise ship with a bodyguard with filthy rich parents but still sees life as sad will be a Gary Stu. Anyone? I think i have a character that fit the overly-emotional part, overly-loner part. If anyone is interested, i will post the thread which i think i am being Gary Stu in and people can criticise me, i think i can stand criticism, i think.

[Kiari]

Sorry to disturb this thread, but i was wondering from the people in this thread -who will be my critics- will think that a 16 year old boy who is on a cruise ship with a bodyguard with filthy rich parents but still sees life as sad will be a Gary Stu. Anyone? I think i have a character that fit the overly-emotional part, overly-loner part. If anyone is interested, i will post the thread which i think i am being Gary Stu in and people can criticise me, i think i can stand criticism, i think.

That's not sad mary-sue, that's just realistic.
Teenager?
Rich?
...Teenager?
If he's not at least a little angsty and cynical, then he's probably some kind of Buddha.

[Inhert]

3 things which piss me off, and is often done by Mary Sues, and three levels of how much that can piss me off.

1. Dodging
a) Low-tier. Bullets when the marksman already has a good shot on you. It's perfectly possible to dodge someone's aim, but one does not simply evade projectiles moving at 500+ m/s at less than 50 meters.
b) Mid-tier. More bullets (MORE DAKKA). .50 BMG can blow limbs off and chop people in half with a few shots, and guns that fire it have fairly impressive rates of fire. Usually, they are able to escape unharmed because more dakka weapons produce smoke, which instantly renders a mass attack ineffective.
c) GOD-TIER. Lasers, period. If you had a good shot when the trigger was pulled, it will hit, no exceptions. Lasers also have no recoil, so follow up shots are just as accurate at the first. Any person moving fast enough to dodge a laser after it is fired probably has more pressing issues... like causing a huge detonation of plasma when they impact a brick wall at relativistic speeds.

2. Learning Abilities
a) Low-tier. Fast learner/instant expert. Mary Sues consistently display the ability to learn things very quickly if you give them time or a book... unless they're too sexy for books. In which case you should throw acid on their faces, hurr durr.
b) Mid-tier. Learning things instantly through observation. This is probably the second most boring type of hero ever created. Learning the attacks of your enemies means that you have no logical progression as a hero, and will basically be a technical taxidermist cutting a bloody path through all the cool and genuinely interesting characters in a story or RP.
c) GOD-TIER. Being a master of everything, ever, period. Or almost having every ability to the point where it would weaken you to learn new things. Because that's an ideal reflection of the human being and an excellent character around which to tell a story!

3. Mary Sue Player Types
a) Low-tier. Long runners. Some people invest a long amount of time into an original character and love them to death. When you insult that investment and try to make them question it or offer up the prospect of them being vanquished, they go batshit or godmod all over you because their own personal continuity is more important than any story you're telling. Annoying, but ironically, the most competent kind of Mary Sue player.
b) Mid-tier. Kitchen sinkers. These kinds of players cannot be contented to a single or a handful of concepts, and lack the ability to truly make anything their own. Everything is derived, remixed and piled atop a glorious mound of text which describes how their character has black hair blue highlights and red eyebrows with streaks of yellow and puce, and has the powers of earth, wind and fire, immortality, automatic regeneration and magic sex appeal despite being an antisocial anorexic wreck with an adorable tsundere girlfriend whom he saved from being raped by the much dreaded zombie carp. Mundane is not bad. It is mundane. GET WITH IT.
c) GOD-TIER. Unsympathetic self-insert/replacement players. Stacks with all of the above. ESPECIALLY, ANY OF THE ABOVE. Yes, we know. You like Edward Cullen, Draco, Lestat, Ali al Sarches and stick them in leather pants. They then fall in love with your overdone (see above) or boorishly plain self-insert, who seems to lack any characteristics that would draw in a mormon vampire, racist wizard, self-absorbed bisexual vampire, or awesomely villainous complete monster... and yet. He falls in love, is redeemed and the story is over! Or... not. For some reason, it's possible to have more story after you've so totally and horrifically dismembered and derailed the original content. That's okay though, because the people that hate you won't read them, and the ones actually reading your stories are doing the exact same thing and are the last people on Earth to criticize you!

Darn, I'm ragefacing enough that I need to cool off before I explain how I've avoided these bad tropes thus far.

[Xeynar]

c) GOD-TIER. Lasers, period. If you had a good shot when the trigger was pulled, it will hit, no exceptions. Lasers also have no recoil, so follow up shots are just as accurate at the first. Any person moving fast enough to dodge a laser after it is fired probably has more pressing issues... like causing a huge detonation of plasma when they impact a brick wall at relativistic speeds.

So you hate Jedi Knights? Because they can, and will, dodge/deflect lasers. But then, Star Wars makes it pretty clear that lightsabers are "not as clumsy or random" (the words of Obi-Wan) as a blaster, and that they are "...an elegant weapon, for a more... civilized age". *shrugs*

a) Low-tier. Fast learner/instant expert. Mary Sues consistently display the ability to learn things very quickly if you give them time or a book... unless they're too sexy for books. In which case you should throw acid on their faces, hurr durr.

So Anakin Skywalker is a big no no?

c) GOD-TIER. Unsympathetic self-insert/replacement players. Stacks with all of the above. ESPECIALLY, ANY OF THE ABOVE. Yes, we know. You like Edward Cullen, Draco, Lestat, Ali al Sarches and stick them in leather pants. They then fall in love with your overdone (see above) or boorishly plain self-insert, who seems to lack any characteristics that would draw in a mormon vampire, racist wizard, self-absorbed bisexual vampire, or awesomely villainous complete monster... and yet. He falls in love, is redeemed and the story is over! Or... not. For some reason, it's possible to have more story after you've so totally and horrifically dismembered and derailed the original content. That's okay though, because the people that hate you won't read them, and the ones actually reading your stories are doing the exact same thing and are the last people on Earth to criticize you!

You've read "My Immortal", haven't you?

P.S.: Stup falming me you wnabe, prepy posrs! Becuz my riting is gud and u no it!!!11!!!!1

[Arke]

Oh no, I'm not a Mary-Sue/Marty Stu, I can be killed! It's only during a blue moon where you have to shoot me with a diamond and onyx concentrated bullet that HAS to come from a silver Wesson PPC! It has to be shot into the left part of my appendix and at the same time a stake must be driven through my right big toe! Then you must light the body up with greek fire so I don't reincarnate.

That's probably what I hate most.

§

[BoyKagome]

I don't know if it counts, but after I decide on a pic or something I always pick my characters personality's from like a laundry list of different character that I though had good attitudes. But I mean some characters are cool BECAUSE they get hurt and beaten up so often. Tobi from Naruto, Ryouga from Ranma, Yuffie ff7 is always klutzing out. I don't think copying a characters blue print is horrible but it definitely needs to be adapted to whatever Role Play its linked to. Perfection actually makes the character lose depth and if hes too powerful, he can just seem like a street bully.

[Inhert]

So you hate Jedi Knights? Because they can, and will, dodge/deflect lasers. But then, Star Wars makes it pretty clear that lightsabers are "not as clumsy or random" (the words of Obi-Wan) as a blaster, and that they are "...an elegant weapon, for a more... civilized age". *shrugs*

Ironically, blaster bolts are not lasers. They're 'packages' of charged particle propelled at speeds that are very much bellow lightspeed. A real laser is invisible unless you have a high amount of debris in the air, has a muzzle velocity (how fast it moves) of 1c (speed of light, or roughly 300, 000 kilometers per second) and would ranged from stupidly hard to block (from a thin pulsed beam) to immensely dangerous (think the turbolaser batteries on the starships, those beams were almost a quarter meter wide).

Jedi can totally block low speed particle blasts as much as they want, but real lasers are another story entirely.