The Mary Sue/Marty Stu: Thoughts?

[Exoskeleton]

Recently I've been hearing a lot about these types of characters in RPs. From what I understand these are nearly invincible, multi talented, loved-by-all characters who are supposedly their authors idealized versions of themselves. From what I've heard and seen they are widely hated and can ruin a great RP experience.

What do you guys think about Mary Sues/Marty Stus? Have you ever experienced characters like these or made a few yourself? Do you think they get too much hate?

 

[Paddy McGee]

When I first started roleplaying, a lot of my original characters were Martys, primarily because I thought that was how you made interesting characters.


It was less of the overpowered, genius type character and more of the overly-dramatic and all-knowing type.

Then one day I realised how boring those types of characters were. That there's no point having a character who's already reached the peak. The whole fun of the experience is DEVELOPING the character.

Okay, so the almighty character type can work in certain aspects of narratives(For example, Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII) but in a roleplay a party with a Sue/Stu really just makes the other characters redundant. Who needs John when Joe can destroy any enemy with one hit, knows the antagonist's motives and plan and has both the motivation and emotional stability to succeed. It just doesn't work in a group effort.


That's not to say that a roleplay shouldn't EVER have a main character... But, no one character is born greater than another.


That's just my interpretation of the idea.


Self-inserts(I'm gonna class them differently) drive me up the wall. I can relate to people who devote certain aspects of their personality into characters... But to take and make yourself the hero in every single way isn't a good way to roleplay or create characters. It's lazy imo.

 

[Captain Squee]

I typically base my characters personalities on aspects of my own, but I make sure to give my characters faults that lead to an easy death. I only have one regenerator, and his regeneration process takes a long time. The only time I ever made a near-indestructible character was in a story of mine, and his only purpose was to be taken down as a team. No one man could beat him, but it was intended to be set up that way as a story element.

I have RPed with characters like that before and it's annoying as all hell when they completely avoid everything with no apparent explanation.

It's understandable when you have OP characters, like my own Arukab, but they have to have a simple way to defeat them. If you get Arukab in the air for even a split second, he's doomed. His powers are made to be a ground and stationary steel fortress. Take that away, and he's a flying hunk of metal that can only land hard. For the fun of it, hit him with some electricity and he's dead. Even the most OP of characters need to be weak against something.

 

[Tipsynaruto]

Lol. My knight in shining armours are all Mary Stues.

However, i try to make a point in reducing their talents to one tree and not make them invincible. I may at times go crazy with them in the rp, but realistically, i make them weaker when i rp them.

I dont know what it is, but i generally like to make my characters likeable, either through being nice or being the magnificent bastard. I really need to try and flaw my characters more. Make them more selfish. Just watched some people play Warhammer 40k live RP game with digital dice and all and one of the guys has the most entertaining characters. Full of flaws and personality issues, but by god was he entertaining.

OMFG! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

"She's exotically beautiful, often having an unusual hair or eye color, and has a similarly cool and exotic name."

Thats my character to a Tee >.<

 

[Mikasa]

I don't really mind them, I think of them as the sort of 'legends-in-the-making'. In another manner of speaking, you're essentially dealing with characters that are going to become famous for their superhuman prowess. As long as they do not twist my character's personality or murder them randomly, I'm generally okay.

 

[Tipsynaruto]

Tho the big question is, how much of a mary stu is too much?

We know the traits, and personally, if you ahve one or two of them, thats fine, but how much alike the definition is too much?

 

[Exoskeleton]

I feel like too much would be those types of characters who pretty much go against a story or decides to automatically take it upon themselves to become the center of attention or just cant die. I usually associate them as characters who try too hard to be cool.

There are a few characters I've created that have one, two, or three sue traits, yet I don't think having a few sue traits makes a character bad. I think it's all in the way you roleplay the character. I've seen characters that may seem like typical sue characters become complex and evolve over time, and it was because the person who RPed those characters did so in a way that went against typical sue stereotypes. However I've also seen about 3 characters who didn't seem much like sues at first glance became all-powerful, super sexylicious, all-knowing supreme beings with faster than light reflexes and powers that could wipe out cities. They always seemed to take things into their own hands in the RP, even the story, downgrading the RP experience for everyone else.

I personally don't mind sue traits as long as there's not a whole bunch of them together and they have no handicap whatsoever(I tend to like giving my characters unique names/eyecolors ). However stuff like being a super multi-talented combat specialist 16 year old kid wont really fly well with me.

I sort of disagree with Mikasa's legends in the making point seeing as most Sues are already self proclaimed legends who have mastered every bit of power they can. Rarely have I ever seen sues get any kind of character development, which is something I personally love. They mostly are just there for the ride and to show off how cool they are when RPed terribly.

I'mm pretty sure my character Revilo is a stu/sue. But I intentionally wrote him as a brooding powerhouse for the sake of the later story to come. That RP never really got the to part where the characters get that powerful anyways. So I'm not sure if that counts as a regular stu. Everyone's guilty of having at least one sue/stu.

 

[Captain Squee]

Yeah, everyone who has RPed for a long time has one, I do agree. I myself have 3, but I also have a shit ton of characters. That coupled with the fact that I balance them in one way or another makes it so they aren't hijacking the plot. A lot of people forget that personality is also a decent balancing feature. I have a character that can cut his own limb off, then touch you and make yours fall off without explanation while his grows back because he's swapping injuries with you. But he won't do it. Why? That shit hurts and he hates pain, so he just won't do it.

Usually I also make them pretty old. Virgil, the regenerator, is well over 2,000 years of age, and Arukab is in a tenth of this with over 200 years old. As in my age thread, it's important to balance age with power.

 

[Shenorai]

I thought it was Gary Stu? Who the hell is Marty?

From my experience, the Mary Sue/Gary Stu pair can single-handedly end a role-play. For the most part, their characters are controlled by players who either do not know what god-modding/powergaming/metagaming is and outright do it or they feel the need to ignore all rules and just plow ahead into the story.

I've actually come across a Gary Stu who single-handedly killed a forum with his bullshit. As though insisting to be Bass/Forte from Megaman wasn't unoriginal enough, he gave the character the ability to see all, hear all, know all, kill all, and teleport to any location. Any attempt to reason with him or simply tell him he wasn't approved for an RP resulted in him waltzing in and knowing everything right off the bat.

In hindsight, we really should've just banned him for being so disruptive.

 

[Yaoi Master Gavin]

Well, I'm certainly not going to deny that I've made them, but I will deny that I made any intentionally. Similar to Squee, most of my characters are formed around interesting ideas and in order to propagate said idea, I've got to make it compatible with what they do. I.E. if I'm making a hemomancer, by default they have hemomancy but to support it, they would also have edged weapon skills to be able to cause more bloodshed - it's only natural to want to improve your resources.

On another side though, the idea of developing your characters, in theory, is good, but in practice, because of the flaws of the human players, we never get to see the full potential of a character and the amazing idea that you had is pretty much wasted. Having seen so many RPs flounder because of that, I tend to make my characters halfway there, so that maybe I'll actually be able to see the final result.