Let's B!tch. I feel it's a healthy release for our roleplay annoyances 2.0

[KoL]

Is it wrong to complain about having nothing to complain about?

[boomlover]

<Snipped quote by boomlover>

'twould be quite a few mechanics and questions to muse through, but if you like...

@ArenaSnow

i would pm me so we can disscuss specifics.

[pugbutter]

You didn't ask me, but I feel inclined to respond.

I think that attractive characters aren't a problem in themselves, but can be a symptom of another problem. If a character is really super totally hot, but their attractiveness doesn't have any interesting implications on their personality, it could be an indication that someone is playing for wish-fulfilment more so than to create a good story. Chances are, they're just playing an idealised version of themselves, whether they realise it or not. And that's usually detrimental to good story-telling.

For the second point, there's a notable difference between someone playing a character who is snarky teenager, and an actual snarky teenager playing themselves. The former person knows he's playing an annoying character, assumably with the intention of making them less annoying through character development. The latter person probably thinks the way they're acting is actually cool. Their perspective is limited due to their inexperience, and if they don't see the flaws in their own character, they're unlikely to create any interesting development.

These are generalisations, of course. Point is, the problem isn't about snarky teenage supermodels specifically, but about the fact that they are statistically likely to overlap with a miasma of bad roleplaying practices.

@Lalliman

This is pretty much the reply I would have typed out last night hadn't it been 4AM at the time. I don't know whether to feel envious or grateful. I'm going with both.

I define Mary Sues not even necessarily as flawless characters, but those who flaws (if they have any) are not pertinent to their experiences throughout the story. Therefore they move through the entire RP having never been forced by their fears, shortcomings, failures, and unrealistically grand ambitions, to learn, forgive, mature, or cope.

If you've ever seen that one hyper-badass dude in an RP who is, somewhat bafflingly, "afraid of deep water," one of two outcomes is likely: the player is a fan of The Truman Show who inserted a little tribute to the film into his application, or more plausibly, he wrote a Mary Sue. He gave his character "flaws" as lip-service to the practices of good RP, without realizing that because that character will never have to sail across open water during the RP, it serves no purpose but to trick the app's readers into thinking he boasts depth and realism in his writing repertoire. The female version of this cliche is probably the "fear of spiders," again never confronted during the story, but the principle applies to any "character flaw" which is not relevant to the events happening within the RP's narrative.

It's simply inherent in the notion of "flawlessness," literal or practical though it may be, that your character will sport no physical flaws either. For the record, I've seen plenty of poorly written ugly characters, so deforming and marring a character isn't a one-way ticket to creating a more interesting personality by any means; but not once have I seen an ugly Mary Sue.

It's all about intention, really. You can play a good-looking character with hopes, dreams, ambitions, fears, and insecurities, just like those which exist in real life, because yes, people can be incidentally good-looking; or you can design them deliberately to be gorgeous supermodels, a single symptom of holding the same fucked priorities which spawn Mary Sues in the first place.

[SleepingSilence]

@pugbutter Honestly most mary sues in actual writing or fan fictions, are usually described as "average in appearance". It doesn't actually change the fact that they get a bunch of hot people to flock to them like birds. But beautiful characters actually aren't often used for self insert characters. Because it's easier for an audience, to relate to an "average" looking person. But yeah pretty much detest them for the same reasons, and you're correct about the flaws. That a flaw isn't a flaw, if it doesn't effect them in the story.

[pugbutter]

@SleepingSilence Mary Sues in roleplay are gorgeous because they're created by the audience as representation of themselves, whereas in films and books the Mary Sue is presented to the audience by an outside party, usually for a solitary story beat (power fantasy, steamy romance, w/e). In the latter case, averageness is more relatable because the audience is entering a world over which they have no creative control, with which they're unfamiliar. The fantasy is the audience themselves entering the world through a sympathetic vessel.

The first time you pick up a book series you have probably had no exposure to that fictional universe's laws, folkways, customs, and cultures before, and while a "fish out of water" is a perfectly acceptable device for introducing the audience to this world, the Mary Sue is a character who, while living among all these rules, can ignore them or even be ignorant to them at will, entirely without repercussions. Among these rules of course is beauty standards, and if a character can be lusted over by all cast members of the opposite sex despite not deserving it (being "average" and not, by that culture's standards, a near-perfect physical specimen), then they have broken rules of their own universe without consequence. Therefore they're still Mary Sues, despite what the author says about how "plain" they are.

That's the difference. When it comes to middle-aged housewives and 12 year old pre-teen girls watching a romance movie, which is the better fantasy? Hot guys swooning for a busty supermodel who looks nothing like them, or hot guys swooning for an average chick who kinda-sorta-maybe looks like them, and could some day be them in a romantic encounter at a restaurant or something? Whereas when you're the one writing the fantasy, of course you'd be as beautiful as possible, because beauty brings with it more power than just sexual desirability. It has more utility in RP and it's simply more fun (*for these people, not for me) to pretend you're beautiful and not normal, since you're already normal IRL.

[The Elvenqueen]

When a roleplay partner finally gets back from RL stuff and is excited to get back into roleplaying, but by now your (as in, my) life has decided to play the "asshole" card and suck all the life out of you so that you don't even know how to begin a reply

And you feel bad giving shitty, half-assed ones but don't want to or know how to approach them to say you can't write right now, because you don't want to upset them even though you know they'd probably be okay with it....maybe.

I don't even know *smacks head on desk repeatedly and tries to get inspiration out of it that way* .___.

[Sanctus Spooki]

The tendency to assume a character that rubs you the wrong way is a Mary Sue. Also, details needing to be explicitly explained, exercise some critical thinking and you can discover some interesting things, or uncover your own bias.

For example, I have made a character who one of their listed fears was essentially, "Fear of deep water" and also had a fear of spiders. The rp this character was made for was basically a space Mecha RP @pugbutter was actually a part of -not saying his annoyance was referring to my character, but it did make me want to address this- Now, being largely based in space, the likelihood of this character encountering a large body of water was probably slim. However, despite it not being relevant to the RP, unless they were to land on Earth, it was rather relevant to the character. The character in question had grown up on the moon Titan, where the closest thing to a lake, let alone a sea/ocean, are pools of liquid methane, at temperatures close to -200 Celsius. I assumed this would likely lead to a natural fear of these pools, since even slipping into one of these pools would cause sever cold burns, and possibly death. Extending that idea, I assumed that having no experience with actual lakes or oceans, the idea of water as far as the eye can see, even if he has never personally experienced these things himself, combined with the existence of bizarre lifeforms - again for someone who has no actual experience with these things - swimming all about him, would likely fill him with dread. So it would be easy to say that this character really has a fear of things he doesn't understand, or a fear of the unknown.

It's so easy to simply label a character that you don't like to be a Mary Sue, and even easier when you toss away the actual definition of a Mary Sue, and substitute your own. It makes it so that any character that you don't like, whether it be that you think they are too attractive, too smart, or that everybody likes them - which you can hardly fault a single person for in the case of roleplay - And its even easier when you read a simple detail and make your own explanation: "Oh so this is just a gender-bent version of Starfire, oh so this character is loyal too a fault, big deal, wheres the actual fault in that etc etc." It makes it so that you can dislike any character whatsoever, and instead of admitting that you just don't like the character (I personally hated Tanis Half-Elven, doesn't mean he was a bad character) you can cover up the personal bias you hold against them behind some overused criticism like 'Mary Sue/Gary Stu'

Regarding the need to explain things in explicit detail, I'll use the same RP, in which one character I once jokingly described as: A former child soldier, unapologetic, and apparently untraumatized. Potentially Psychotic... At first glance this likely would sound as if I was criticizing the fact that despite clearly having lived a harsh life, the character appeared to be entirely emotionally unaffected by their situation. Reading between the lines (And perhaps I was giving the Rper to much credit) it was rather clear that the character had adopted a psychopathic/sociopathic personality, combined with apparently copious levels of drug use, to dull their pain and hide behind a mask.

On a more minor note, the tendency for people to assume that everyone but them is somehow the norm, and that they alone are special. Everybody is special, (AWWW THATS ADOWABLE) and I'm willing to bet everyone has at least one IRL story that would make the rest of us go "C'mon dude that didn't happen. Don't lie."

[pugbutter]

It makes it so that you can dislike any character whatsoever

@Sanctus Spooki

Wow, people disliking characters that I like? Disgusting. How hasn't this been made illegal yet?

[Sanctus Spooki]

It's not illegal, but labeling them as a Mary Sue simply for that is more than a tad pig-headed.

[pugbutter]

It's a good thing no one in this thread has done that, then.

[Sanctus Spooki]

Yup, that's for certain

Also, just to clarify, lets look at that entire sentence, rather than snipping the bit you took offense at -omitting the brackets including my own personal disliked character - : It makes it so that you can dislike any character whatsoever, and instead of admitting that you just don't like the character, you can cover up the personal bias you hold against them behind some overused criticism like 'Mary Sue/Gary Stu'

[pugbutter]

I don't know where these phony accusations are coming from. How can I use Mary Suedom as a catch-all for any character I want to hate when I gave very clear, explicit parameters on my idea of what a M.S. character looks like, and when only a small contingency of characters is sure to fit within these bounds? Furthermore, why would I choose to hate a character first, and then grasp for reasons to justify this hatred only afterward? Doesn't the cause come first and the effect later?

Frankly I'd forgotten that your character ever existed, so I'm glad you don't think I wrote that passage just to spite you. But I'm not rescinding my opinion just because he fits within my personal definition of a Mary Sue. Feeling offended and entering a kneejerk self-defense response simply aren't sufficient arguments in persuading me to do so.

[Sanctus Spooki]

I'm sorry is this where we vent our roleplaying annoyances, or where we engage in debate?

Edit: Oh and Kettle, meet Pot.

[BushidoBantam]

It's so easy to simply label a character that you don't like to be a Mary Sue, and even easier when you toss away the actual definition of a Mary Sue, and substitute your own. It makes it so that any character that you don't like, whether it be that you think they are too attractive, too smart, or that everybody likes them - which you can hardly fault a single person for in the case of roleplay - And its even easier when you read a simple detail and make your own explanation...

@Sanctus Spooki

@Sanctus Spooki obviously the assertions made by @pugbutter aren't entirely veracious, as there are always exceptions to culturally established "rules" in subjective fields, but I think that their post is full of insight and very well written. It is certainly unfair to compare their post to a remark as simple as "a Mary Sue is any character whose personality traits I dislike", especially given that their claims are rooted in objective evidence (such as the ability to easily attract other characters despite lacking the traits found in every other "attractive" character in the work).

This isn't to say that your specific example is wrong either. I don't have any prior knowledge of the RP that you mentioned or of your character, but based on your description I wouldn't think straightaway that your character is a Mary Sue (although I would have to see for myself if the way you roleplayed the character in writing is truly representative of the light in which you portrayed them in your post here). Context is important in these kinds of discussions, especially when people feel like certain criticisms might be unfairly aimed at them. However, I'd say that you are waaaaay off-base by insinuating that @pugbutter is somehow manipulating the definition of "Mary Sue" for their own vendetta. They are simply taking a more nuanced approach to analyzing the character traits that make up such a prevalent trope by pointing out the trend of novice writers using "false flaws" as a means of dodging the typical "Mary Sue" claim. It is only natural to assume that the definition of the term should evolve as people begin to exploit its obvious loopholes.

Edit: Also, you really aren't helping yourself by being super defensive about the term. That attitude only serves to erode your ethos. You'd be better off actually trying to dismantle your opponent's assertions (good luck, they're pretty solid) than just calling them immature.

I'm sorry is this where we vent our roleplaying annoyances, or where we engage in debate?

Edit: Oh and Kettle, meet Pot.

@Sanctus Spooki

Edit2: Well this section of the forum is called "Roleplaying Discussion"

[Sanctus Spooki]

I never said that his points were wrong, and I never said that he was manipulating anything for a personal vendetta.

He was the one who took it personally, I merely mentioned him because it was his post that spurred my own, to try and provide a counter view to some of the arguments he had made. He was the one who chose to get offended.

[Sanctus Spooki]

Edit2: Well this section of the forum is called "Roleplaying Discussion"

@BushidoBantam

I think we all know where this 'discussion' was leading.

[pugbutter]

and I never said that he was manipulating anything for a personal vendetta.

@Sanctus Spooki

Are you sure about that? Maybe you should explain what you meant when you said this, then:

It's so easy to simply label a character that you don't like to be a Mary Sue, and even easier when you toss away the actual definition of a Mary Sue, and substitute your own ... you can cover up the personal bias you hold against them behind some overused criticism like 'Mary Sue/Gary Stu'

@Sanctus Spooki

It sounds to me like you think I'm pretty damn sinister.

[Sanctus Spooki]

It sounds to me like you are being completely defensive over this. Personal Bias was the personal Bias against the character.

As I said before people who need things explained in explicit detail.

Now that was directed at you (in this case, not the previous)

Edit: Should I explain what I meant by 'that' as well?

Edit 2: Personal Bias a.k.a. this character rubs me the wrong way.

[pugbutter]

It sounds to me like you are being completely defensive over this.

@Sanctus Spooki

According to WordCounter your post is 639 words long, and 367 of them (57.43%) are in defense of how deep and engaging your character is despite matching my criteria for being a Mary Sue. Are you sure I'm the one who's getting defensive? I'm just arguing my points, and hopefully, rebuffing the idea that I'm a vindictive piece of shit just because I said something you dislike.

[Sanctus Spooki]

LMAO yes they were, because I was using my character as an example of how it is easy to take one thing out of context, when you don't seek to actually understand something, and only care about sounding right.

Yes, you are the one who is being defensive. Stop trying to make it seem like I'm making you sound like an ass.

The fact that you literally put my post through word counter says enough about who is getting more emotionally invested in this conversation, btw.