Mary Sue

Mary Sue is any original or deeply altered character who represents a slice of his/her creator's own ego; 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. [1]

Aspects of Mary Sues Common to Online Roleplaying

Excerpted from "How to Be a Mary Sue" [2]:

• "You want to sound cool, so try using a color, celestial body, or even animal as a first (and maybe even second!) name."
• "Be smart, be witty, and above all, talented. After all, no one likes a partypooper."
• "Distinguishing features are a must to make you stand out from your new teammates, so try to get a few nifty tattoos. If you can't afford them, take a kitchen knife and start slicing. Remember, scars are as good as birthmarks!"
• "Looking good is important. You might want to consider acquiring contacts and dying your hair (white is a favorite) before making the scene."
• "Learn to giggle and simper. Older males find it endearing."
• "Learn martial arts, at least one musical instrument, and if possible a couple of foreign languages. The more special skills you have, the better!"
• "Get yourself a gimmick, like a piece of jewelry or an article of clothing you wear constantly. Oh yeah, avoid dresses. They're for sissies."
• "Animal friends are ALWAYS fun! Try a small dragon or a hawk for starters -- they're pretty, compact, loyal, and can rip out your opponent's eyes in .5 seconds."
• "When shopping around for super powers, I suggest going for telepathy, elemental control, or shape shifting. No one likes a girl who can beat up the team's heavy-hitters. It's unladylike."
• "For a costume try a stylish little midriff number, in leather if possible. Or, if you're a Good Girl, try something pink and flowing. Huge boots and tight tops work well together."
• "You should have ridiculous amounts of power at your disposal. No one likes a partial transformer, or a weak telepath."
• "If you can make male characters fight for your affections, you know you're in the big leagues!"
• "If you're a little below average in the looks department, consider plastic surgery. Remember, the optimum bodytype is 'willowy.'"
• "In Mary Sue Land no one ever has to put any amount of time into training for their skills. Bonus points if you use telepathy to learn all your arsekicking skills."
• "With the proper teachers it should be NO problem to go from total newbie to Master Apprentice of the Secret Arts in the space of a few weeks. If you have to break a sweat you obviously aren't trying hard enough."
• "Any physical mutation will only serve to *enhance* your already intense personal beauty and charisma. Wings are always feathery and graceful, claws are always retractable and unnoticeable, and so on and so forth."
• "No Mary Sue ever has to study to learn anything! Deep knowledge of hard subjects comes as naturally as breathing!"
• "Quantum physics is a breeze: just use your subatomically-finely-honed telekinesis to grasp the difficult theory!"
• "It's always dramatic and endearing to FLING your innocent, beautiful self in front of various teammembers, deflecting fatal plasma blasts/bullets/oncoming semitrucks, even if your teammembers are invulnerable or otherwise protected!"
• "Remember: though plasma blasts WILL bubble your skin, you will still leave a lovely tragic corpse with your glorious expressive eyes staring toward the sky!"
• "Important note -- no matter how innocent you are, a Mary Sue *always* knows just what to do in bed. And never has to worry about unwanted pregnancy, diseases, or anything *bad*!"
• "If your intentions are on the raunchy side, remember, just because someone's been shown as straight so far doesn't mean you can't secrete pheromones to make them change your mind!"
• "No matter HOW weird things get, a Mary Sue is never fazed."
• "Having an alien lover is a good idea, and often a rewarding experience. Sure, to them humans are freakish pink sacks of goo, but your unique beauty transcends species barriers!"

Role-Playing Aspects of Mary Sues

In this context, we will discuss the martyrdom and power-gaming aspects of Mary Sue, and not the (missing half of this sentence!)

Table-top role-playing, MUDs, massively-multiplayer RPGs and the like are typified by their formalism? -- empirical, mathemetical rules for resolving conflict. Characters have hit points that are reduced by weapon attacks and raised by healing items, etc. A moderator, such as a human referee or the computer, determines what's a fair hit and what's a miss. Storytelling is about conflict, and the simplest conflict is combat, so most games in this mode rely on combat. Since numbers and mathematics play a heavy role, this could be called "left-brained role-playing".

Chat-rooms, MUCKs, and the like are very informal and almost always unmoderated. There are only descriptions of what the characters can do. Conflict is resolved by the consent of players involved. Since emotions and relations play a heavy role, this could be called "right-brained role-playing".

In this right-brained role-playing, a conflict can spring up between characters; moderating the action involves playing the roles out, often with one winner and one loser.

The Mary Sue character enjoys popularity in right-brained role-playing because conflict usually involves one winner and one loser, and the Mary Sue is a professional loser. Building up how fantastic and unique a Mary Sue is, and then leaving behind the "golden-eyed corpse", is typical of right-brained, unmoderated role-playing.

The danger is that right-brained role-playing can descend into "power-gamers" vs. "Mary Sues". This usually isn't a problem if there's enough Mary Sues to go around.

Problems can arise if the Mary Sues don't go "down for the count". A perpetual victim can become the butt of many jokes.

Some thoughts on the validity of this in the context of Puzzlebox

How many of your characters have the "Mary Sue" nature? Most muck characters have a bit of it. Most of my masks on Puzzlebox match up with a few "Mary Sue" traits. Power fantasies, beauty fantasies. It's even more pronounced when so many characters are Mythic.

A "Mary Sue" is a character who fits a number of these cliches, and does it without realizing they're cliches. Puzzlebox is full of characters riffing on the time-worn roles whose players are aware of these roles. Cliches become cliches because they work; they're narrative tools. A lot of the "Mary Sue" traits are shorthands for saying "This character is Special and Destined".

Is it bad for your characters to be a representation of an aspect of yourself? Even if that aspect is an exaggerated hope-for improvement of yourself?

• If a character is entirely unlike yourself, there might be a fair amount of difficulty relating to/playing xer.

How is a Mary Sue related to a powergamer? Are they both the same thing, in different contexts?

• A powergamer tells you their mu* character is oh so powerful/beautiful/wonderful, and how you react to them. A Mary Sue bends the world of xer story in the same way, but xer world is written entirely by xer author, rather than the multiple authors of a muck.

• A Mary Sue generally has a strong tendency towards depicting themselves as a 'princess in need of rescue' (hence the cliche of unicorns cropping up on some depictions), and consider their own creations as if a divinity itself had granted them. They are never team players and always seek to be in charge of everything under the guise of a grandmotherly demeanor. Yes, a Mary Sue is a very real feminine affliction. I'd say Powergamer is the male counterpart.

Then Again

Blue is/was a character who was a princess in need of rescue, and she represented a core part of her player's personality and identity. However, she had/has some redeeming features including a capacity to genuinely engage with others and be something of a team player.

Orange is/was a classic powergamer, and was specifically conceived as the male counterpart of Blue. And while he caused a great deal of IC upset, he seemed reasonably well-liked OOC. (And he has/had IC fans too.)

The reasons cliches become cliches is because they are powerful and desirable. The task is not to avoid cliche, the task is to execute it with style and skill. -- Blue and Orange

Chris is in danger of becoming a Mary Sue. Though he's not even female. He's worse than just an aspect of the player's ego, he's the player himself. This might or might not be good. In one sense it's honest and not very exaggerated. In another it's a potential to slide into idealism and delusion of self-importance as well as inflated personal character traits. Maybe he'll start a new cliche, of a character endowed with meta-information trying very hard to still be IC. --C

• Holy crap, Nikolai could be considered a Mary Sue. His inventive abilities are always played up to near-godlike, and he often 'takes the fall'. And he's an aspect of the player's source of mad ideas. So he's a mild cliche. I don't care, though, I still love him. :-} --C

References

[1] [The Official Mary Sue Society Avatar Appreciation Site!]

[2] [How to Be a Mary Sue]

[Mary Sue Litmus Test]