Mary Sue Appreciation Thread

[Lago_AM3P]

I guess I'll start.

Yusuke Yurameshi- One of the most paradoxical Mary Sues ever. Is unattractive, loudmouthed, selfish, and simple-minded. Does really poorly in almost any endeavor he undertakes, pretty much having to be led by the nose. His own friends make fun of him and/or want to punch them--instead of a source of strength or pity, he doesn't even care. 'Wins' most of his early fights through stubbornness or astounding coincidence. He only possesses a few Mary Sue-ish traits: demon background, alcoholic mother, a tiny handful of people cried about him after he died and hidden power. Yet the people who created this series said that he's a prime example of a Mary Sue. WTF?



While I can't point to a specific subject, all of my spellcaster characters, even the villainous ones, become Mary Sues in D&D no matter how hard I try to stop it. I think it has to do with the fact that my characters tend to have abilities way in excess of the other people at the table and I am thus usually appointed as a leader. Even when my cleric has a beer belly and smallpox scars. Damn.

[Lago_AM3P]

Damn, that post got mangled.

What I mean to say is that in the context of Dungeons and Dragons, your characters HAVE to be Mary Sues.

No one wants to play a game where the characters are constantly overshadowed by larger forces. No one wants to play a game where the NPCs in the game ignore their goals and dreams and act unaffected by their actions. No one wants to sit out on an adventure because the people who tried it before have failed.

If you're not Mary Sue-ing your character to the best of your ability (not to the point where you interfere with other peoples' schticks), then either you don't know the rules or you are just lazy.

[Boulie_98]

Who the fuck is mary sue?

[Neeek]

http://www.subreality.com/marysue/explain.htm

[Josh_Kablack]

Mary Sue is any original or deeply altered character who represents a slice of his/her creator's own ego;

I'd like to point out that the above part of the description applies to every fictional character ever.

s/he is treasured by his/her creator but only rarely by anyone else. More negatively, a Mary Sue is a primadonna (usually but not always badly-written) who saps life and realism out of every other character around, taking over the plot and bending canon to serve his/her selfish purposes.

Gee, and the original was a fanfic character for a series that contained Captain Kirk?

I think that the short definition is "Mary Sue = fanfic character. (And by the way, fanfic characters suck, not like real 70s TV show characters, who all had literary depth.)"

And working with that definition, I'll gladly agree that all D&D, heck, all RPG PCs ever qualify as Mary Sues.

[Oberoni]

Yeah, it sounds like the original Mary Sue was a chick in literature that had the audacity to be a strong female lead. How dare she!!!!!!111

I suppose I'll jump on the bandwagon and admit that many of my characters are Mary Sues: they are people with fantastic powers that strive to, in one way or another, make a difference in the world. They are almost always in the "upper tier" of ability within the party.

[Wrenfield]

Yeah ... I really don't of anyone who *doesn't* play Mary Sues.

It's a term that quite frankly, is meaningless. Primarily because it embodies the majority (IMHO) "essences" of all P/C's in RPGs.

[Username17]

A MAry Sue is a character who is a self-insertion character into someone else's story. That's when you take some other established series, and write a self-insertion character into it. Usually to power-trip and jizz all over someone else's world.

D&D is a cooperative storytelling game which explicitly establishes places for the alter egos of the players in the form of PCs. There is, therefore, no possible way for the players to have Mary Sues.

But since there isn't an established set of guidelines for an alter-ego of the DM to run around the world, it is quite easy for the DM to clutter up the world with a Mary Sue or two. These are the big penis NPCs that the DM throws around, caring about whether they win or not. You know the ones. The ones where the DM periodically accidentally uses the first person.

If the DM ever describes the action of the gloriously beautiful vampire queen as "I take the candle upstairs..." instead of "She takes the candle upstairs...", even on accident, you can bet that you have a MAry Sue on hand.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

Honestly I don't really see what makes a Mary Sue. It sounded like a fanfic character until the webpage starts calling characters like Elric a Mary Sue. That would just seem to suggest to me that it simply means any main character in a work of fiction and generally leads me to believe that it's some meaningless term you can apply to any main character whenever you feel like it.

[Username17]

No, it's when the character is a self-insertion character who is written into great strength for the purpose of massaging the ego of the author. Elric, for instance, spends many books being quite clearly an extension of the author's desires to kick ass on shit. Morecock spends a lot of time pondering how powerful Elric is, and how everyone wants to smoke his cock even though he's just an auth... a sickly elf.

You can usually spot this literary device if surrounding characters spend a lot of time telling one of the characters how totally awesome they are. Like the fvcking useless Pern books about the harper halls and that dumb chick with all the firedrakes. She's arbitrarily good at everything and everyone wants to suck her cock because of how totally mindblowingly amazing she is at everything she puts her mind to.

That's Mary Sue. That's a fvck wad of totally fvcking annoying as fvck fvck. Fvck that fvcking fvck. When I read some fvck writing like that, or play with some fvck game mastering like that, I want to fvck them a new fvck hole with my fvcking laser eyebeams. I'm willing to take Bard levels just to get the laser eyebeams to fvck them up with.

-Username17

[User3]

Wow. And this started off as an "appreciation" post.

[RandomCasualty]

1106547920[/unixtime]]No, it's when the character is a self-insertion character who is written into great strength for the purpose of massaging the ego of the author. Elric, for instance, spends many books being quite clearly an extension of the author's desires to kick ass on shit. Morecock spends a lot of time pondering how powerful Elric is, and how everyone wants to smoke his cock even though he's just an auth... a sickly elf.

You can usually spot this literary device if surrounding characters spend a lot of time telling one of the characters how totally awesome they are. Like the fvcking useless Pern books about the harper halls and that dumb chick with all the firedrakes. She's arbitrarily good at everything and everyone wants to suck her cock because of how totally mindblowingly amazing she is at everything she puts her mind to.

The problem is that pretty much any main powerful character is like that. That's what main heroes do, pretty much any main action hero from Elric to James Bond to Aragorn. We could even say it about Hercules and Paul Bunyan it's just we don't know which author to attribute the ego massaging to. You can pretty much pick out any powerful fictional hero out of any fantasy novel and claim that he's there to massage the ego of the author.

I don't get it, you can't have powerful main characters or they're automatically a Mary Sue? Sounds like pretty much every main fantasy character is a Mary Sue then.

[Username17]

No...
There is a difference between a character being awesome, and the book itself taking a large amount of time for people to fawn over how awesome that character is.

So Hercules is totally hardcore. But rarely in Hercules stories does the poem stop for five pages to have background characters give praise to Hercules. He's just totally hardcore, and does his stuff. That's fine.

But in Elric and Pern, the main characters sit around while people sing songs about how fvcking awesome they are. That's not cool. When the author writes "Quincy said 'You're so fricking awesome, I can't believe it. Also, though I never noticed before, I find you much more attractive than I did in highschool and would totally suck your dick if you would let me." - they are taking time away from the story in order to write down words of encouragement to themselves. Reading that is like watching someone else drive their midlife crisis vehicle. It's an uncomfortable look into their self esteem problems, and makes for bad writing. If someone writes "Carnak's arm twitched visibly as he raised the black sword once again. He was clearly relishing the feel of the damned weapon in his hands as he brought it down once more on the broken body of the lector, slicing life and soul from the frail man." - that's OK. It might be indicative of the author having an unhealthy fascination with hurting people - but you can't tell right away from that one section of writing. Maybe Carnak is supposed to be an unappealing character at that time, maybe it's a phase he's getting over. Whatever.

The point is that there is some stuff you can do that instantly transports the reader into your own feelings of inadequacy, and that's not a comfortable place to be. So writing like that is essentially an act of cruelty to your reader.

-Username17

[Tae_Kwon_Dan]

So I assume Elminster wins the award for Greatest Mary Sue in fantasy literature ever?

[Lago_AM3P]

One of the few reasons why I stayed on the WotC boards as long as I did was because of Seamon Haverian constantly, and I mean /constantly/ bashing on Elminster, Simbul, and Mystra's hoochies.

[RandomCasualty]

1106593794[/unixtime]]
But in Elric and Pern, the main characters sit around while people sing songs about how fvcking awesome they are. That's not cool. When the author writes "Quincy said 'You're so fricking awesome, I can't believe it. Also, though I never noticed before, I find you much more attractive than I did in highschool and would totally suck your dick if you would let me." - they are taking time away from the story in order to write down words of encouragement to themselves. Reading that is like watching someone else drive their midlife crisis vehicle. It's an uncomfortable look into their self esteem problems, and makes for bad writing. If someone writes "Carnak's arm twitched visibly as he raised the black sword once again. He was clearly relishing the feel of the damned weapon in his hands as he brought it down once more on the broken body of the lector, slicing life and soul from the frail man." - that's OK. It might be indicative of the author having an unhealthy fascination with hurting people - but you can't tell right away from that one section of writing. Maybe Carnak is supposed to be an unappealing character at that time, maybe it's a phase he's getting over. Whatever.

So then the definition is any powerful character who a lot of people find sexually attractive?

Honestly I think you're being too critical of authors and reading way too much into things. There are some authors who do that, but I won't say that every person who writes a novel in whcih someone is attracted to the main character is automatically stroking their own ego or something.

Yeah, if you're talking about Ed Greenwood, sure, he is doing that, cause the fucker actually goes around dressing like Elminster in every day life, so you've got some evidence there. But the average author, I really don't think so. Basically without further proof like the guy dressing like his character. It just seems like you're talking out of your ass.

Sometimes you want a certain trait as part of a character, and sometimes being famous or having sex appeal is one of them. James Bond certainly wouldn't be the same if he didn't have the sex appeal part. It's one of the iconic parts of the character.

Really I've read the Elric stories and I didn't find them mostly about everyone telling you how awesome Elric was. If anything Elric was a pretty weak character overall in that he was nothing without the sword. Yeah, some women wanted to have sex with him, but so what? And he met a bad end at the end of the story, it wasn't like Elminster coming to save the day every damn time and raping everything.

I mean really there's a point where I think we should just let authors write stories without criticizing everything and trying to read into their psychology with every word they write. It's like saying any writer of vampire novels who feature vampires having sex with humans has some deep down necrophilia fetish. Any writer who includes a betrayal in one of their novels is inherently untrusting of others.

You can make the claim that any powerful successful character in any novel is a Mary Sue. And that just leads me to believe that the term is notihng more than a way to criticize a character you don't like.

[Username17]

And that just leads me to believe that the term is notihng more than a way to criticize a character you don't like.

Bingo. It's a way of describing why you don't like a character that you don't like. If the character gets praised to the point that it gets in the way of the story, you justify the fact that you find yourself repulsed by dismissing the character as a "Mary Sue".

Elminster is annoying. You can go on at length about what pisses you off so much about reading even half a page of that asshole's accomplishments - but you also have the ability to shake your head and say:

Elminster. What a fvcking Mary Sue.

And that saves time. I'm sure you could find an example of good and entertaining writing centered around someone who gets praised a lot. But then you wouldn't use that terminology - because you wouldn't be insulting it.

It's like how a Liberachi-flaming guy you like is a "Queen", and a Liberachi-flaming guy you hate is a "[EDITED]". The terminology you use is predicated on whether you want to insult people or not. "Mary Sue" is a piece of terminology that is supposed to be insulting.

-Username17

[Lago_AM3P]

By the way, take the original Mary Sue test. Like, in all it's original glory. You can reach it at its wikipedia entry.

So many recognizable major protagonists who takes that test fail. Like, even Gatsby and Michael Corleone.

The only human being I put in that didn't fail is Winson Smith. It's pretty hilarious.

Now if you had to put an original character in (god help you if you're tied to a superhero or fantasy work), you are pretty much destined to fail that test unless he is an extremely boring milquetoast.

Idiots.

[Josh_Kablack]

Guy Montag from Farenheit 451 cashes in just over the line into Mary Sue-ism in that test.

[Boulie_98]

The Mary Sue archetype is not limited to fanfiction. It has existed in slightly different form in many videogames. Many of these Mary Sues are RPG heroines who tend to be loved all too greatly by in-game characters, praised for their beauty, and acknowledged for their "strength" in character, when often they are the embodiment of the weak and submissive female who must depend entirely on male characters, especially their love interest. Often this type of character is kidnapped by the villain or a subordinate, usually multiple times, especially in the case of Colette Brunel.

While the description is highly hilarious and completely factual, I don't think this particular type of Mary Sues has an 'idealised stand-in' component. It's more like an idealisation of a particular view on women.

Because of all the definitions flying around, I'd like to know which one Lago had in mind when starting the thread. I mean, I don't think the guy you mentioned fills the weak and dependent female role very well.

[rapanui]

This is an excellent new term. Thanks Lago! From now on, I shall be wary of Mary Sues.... I think half of the characters I appreciate from literature must be.

At any rate, yeah, almost every DM I know has some sort of Mary Sue. When i initially DMed back in 97, I even had my own Mary Sue. WTF do you expect? I was like 13!

[MrWaeseL]

Is there even any way to appreciate a Mary Sue? That seems to be an oxymoron (or contradictio in terminis, one of those two)

[Tae_Kwon_Dan]

It depends I guess on if you consider them a Mary Sue or not. Out of some of the ones listed as having Mary Sue tendencies, I know that I like some of them:

Aeris from FF VII
Rinoa from FF VIII
Willow Rosenbaum from Buffy

Heck Frank even mentioned Elric earlier and I somewhat agree with him, but I still like the character.

[rapanui]

From wikipedia:

* Has only sympathetic flaws; Mary Sues may be paraplegic, or dangerously naïve, but are very rarely selfish or petty-minded
* Can do no wrong. Or, if she does do anything wrong, has strong justification for it.
* Unique abilities
* Distinctive physical features (odd-coloured eyes, birthmarks, scars etc)
* Unusual pet (especially, 'one only she could tame')
* Deliberately exotic name
* Name based on that of her author
* Cultural/racial background very different from her peers (often adopted out of her culture)
* 21st-century attitudes in a setting where these are unheard-of
* Close relationship with a major canonical character (long-lost brother, etc)
* Centrally involved in every part of the story
* Invokes powers impossible in the canon


COMPLETELY describes Drizzt, except for maybe the author's name part. What a fucking hack.

[Neeek]

1106875291[/unixtime]]From wikipedia:

* Has only sympathetic flaws; Mary Sues may be paraplegic, or dangerously naïve, but are very rarely selfish or petty-minded
* Can do no wrong. Or, if she does do anything wrong, has strong justification for it.
* Unique abilities
* Distinctive physical features (odd-coloured eyes, birthmarks, scars etc)
* Unusual pet (especially, 'one only she could tame')
* Deliberately exotic name
* Name based on that of her author
* Cultural/racial background very different from her peers (often adopted out of her culture)
* 21st-century attitudes in a setting where these are unheard-of
* Close relationship with a major canonical character (long-lost brother, etc)
* Centrally involved in every part of the story
* Invokes powers impossible in the canon


COMPLETELY describes Drizzt, except for maybe the author's name part. What a fvcking hack.

Umm...I think these sort of assume that the character is from a fanfic. For example, "Invokes powers impossible in the canon" is literally impossible for Drizzt. He *is* canon. Claiming that he is centrally involved is *his own story* seems to be a stretch. His name isn't any more exotic than the rest of the drow, so I don't know if that really counts. And the close relationship thing is kinda irrelevant. He's the main character. He's allowed to have family as his enemies/allies. Actually, that one would be in reverse, as he's the major canonical character, so anyone related to *him* would be a Mary Sue, not the other way around.

Whether or not he is a Mary Sue character or not non-withstanding, but your support here is pretty weak.