Mary Sues

All right, I’ve been meaning to get this one done for a long, long time, and now I’m going to give it a go. The subject of Mary Sues is an incredibly important one, and I’m going to take as much time as I need to with it.

With that being said, a definition of a Mary Sue is certainly in order – in *roleplay*a Mary Sue is a character without true fault, often used to placate the reader or writer. It should be noted a Mary Sue is not simply an unhealthy character but a truly faultless one. This may seem like it would quickly eliminate most fictional characters from that spectrum, but on closer look that is unfortunately not the case. I should note too that I will bring up the idea of a Mary Sue “element” throughout this post – while a “Mary Sue” is a faultless character, a Mary Sue “element” makes a character Sue-like, but it’s possible to have Sue elements without being a Sue by definition. I would argue that’s a lot harder than it sounds, though.

What’s interesting?

This question has been haunting me a lot, recently, and I think it would do me good to try and actually address it in regards to roleplay. I think it’s important, though, because I think the level of interest you have in what you’re roleplaying directly affects your ability to actually roleplay. This is a most troublesome issue indeed because all over the place, no matter where you go, you see nearly all the RPers present struggling to maintain activity, usually coming or going in bursts of several months. Because roleplay builds upon itself very heavily, this proves to be incredibly problematic for accomplishing any sort of long-term character or plot building, and ultimately leads to dysfunctional roleplaying communities that move very little.

Okay, so why do people just… stop roleplaying? I would argue it’s because what they’re roleplaying simply isn’t interesting enough. It also takes a reasonable amount of effort, but I’ll talk about that later. I’ve talked about this a little bit with roleplaying on compulsion as well as my thing on special snowflakes, but I’m going to try and focus on it now, so let me see if I can break it down.

Special Snowflakes

So today I’m going to be talking about Special Snowflakes. It’s weird, but for some reason very few people actually acknowledge the existence of Special Snowflakes. They may understand what I mean when I bring it up, but that doesn’t mean they’ll care about it. But I care! But I’m also going to try and make an argument as to why they’re inherently destructive to roleplay.

What is a Special Snowflake anyway? It’s a character that, in the universe they exist in, would be noticeably out of the ordinary. Some people might say “Wow, you’re going to put someone down for that?” because people are so used to this. They read novels or fanfiction, play games or watch movies, and the story is completely focused on exactly that: people out of the ordinary. That type of thing is fine for all those mediums, but roleplay is something completely different. Let me break it down for you.

Escapism Through Roleplay

Okay, so I’ve mentioned this frequently so far, always with the promise to come back to it, so here it goes. Escapism isn’t anything new, and it’s kind of tricky to define, but I’m going to do my best to clarify and reiterate the idea of escapism, specifically its connection with roleplay. I will say right off the bat, though, that I think escapism is innately harmful to the quality of your roleplay, and I’m going to be focusing mostly on how to detect and then how to avoid it. If people are inclined to disagree with this and find escapism to be a perfectly acceptable aspect of your roleplay, then you have a choice here.

1. Stop reading
2. Bear with me
3. Re-evaluate

Compulsion isn't Enough for Roleplay

So it’s been a while, and a lot of that is due to generally stagnation in my own roleplay, but that’s no excuse. I said last time I would do a recap of my “Character Building” series, but after dragging my feet on that for so long, I guess I’m just going to cut my losses and roll with what’s next. It’s getting kind of late, my legs are starting to hurt, and I have a quiz tomorrow, but right now I’m waiting for something; if I stay up late enough I might get a chance to see the blizzard start that’s supposed to slam us. I really love the snow, and I love storms even more, so a snow storm ranks up pretty high in favorite things to watch, but why should you care? Segway!

The thing I love about snow storms is that there’s so much anticipation leading up to it, and then you get several glorious hours of being surrounded by the storm, and then the aftermath seems so… tranquil; you might even spend some time out in the storm, and that’s fun, but you don’t spend too long in it. Being in it is the most intense part of the experience, maybe the greatest amount of consolidated “pleasure” during the whole event, but the beauty of the storm isn’t being stuck in it, it’s being surrounded by it. Roleplay, in fact, is very much similar to this.

Building a Character: Development Through Roleplay

It’s been way too long, and there’s an army of distractions to thank for that. I guess it’s good this is a personal thing, then. Today I want to try and tackle the idea of building and developing a character through roleplay; just calling it “Character Building” should suffice, though. While most characters don’t see nearly as much development as their authors would like (or any for that matter) I would argue that this is certainly one of the highest achievements a roleplayer can make a claim to fame with. There may be times where you feel great triumph in orchestrating a long, devious plot, but character development is something that spans every tense you’re going to write and plan in, and I would argue is the hardest thing to master. This takes everything I’ve gone over into account all at once to produce one glorified, ever-changing product. It’s pretty crazy, and when done well it can be pretty awesome. You really are “building” something, so it makes sense that everything would depend on the other components to make a fully comprehensive structure.

In a nutshell, character building is the changing of everything you’ve built thus far. You have your appearance, personality, and histories altogether and you’ve hopefully established that you can be consistent within your own parameters, so now you can take it a step further. While keeping all those things we’ve gone over consistent, you must now, slowly, change them. This should, naturally, seem counter-intuitive; we’re trying to change but stay the same all at once? Well, from the perspective of your character, the idea of change will count consistency as a given – he or she will act a specific way, because that’s who they are, and diverting from that should be either of note (if it’s a dramatic shift) or should be so subtle that the character doesn’t notice it or suppresses any thoughts about it. I would argue that the act of being subtle is not only much more convincing, but it’s also much more challenging and consequently seen much less. It makes sense that a subtle change over a long period of time would be more common, as it fills in the time much more frequently, and it should likely always be occurring to a certain extent in your roleplay if a character is surrounded by things that would cause it. A great example of this is keeping company that would be otherwise unusual for them or being forced to complete tasks that would not necessarily fit neatly into their character.

This brings me to a very obvious fundamental, but it should be addressed all the same: character building will occur when the character’s person is challenged in some way. A stoic warrior may find the bubbly priest’s good-nature wearing off on him ever so slowly as he keeps company with them; similarly, the priest may find herself appreciating the warrior’s pragmatic reserve as it influences her as well. Now, there’s a difference between a character making a sacrifice and a genuine change in their person, and this should be noted too. If these characters despise each other at first, but they grow to “get along” or “live with one another” then that’s not really character building. In the case of the warrior, he may sacrifice a bit by putting his feelings aside and learn to deal with the priest. However! Should another extroverted character full of emotion come wandering in, the warrior will likely find himself disliking them just as much, because he’s only accustomed himself to deal with the first. Tolerance, while it can certainly lead to development, is not development in and of itself. If, after long enough, the priest has worn off on the warrior enough to encourage toleration toward all people of the type, then it can be said that he has grown personally, and finds himself more appreciative of things in general than he was before. With that out of the way, I’ll return to my original point: there must be an influence on a character in order to change them. Whether it’s long-suffering with a person they don’t agree with or one dramatic event that completely reshapes their perspectives on a number of different things, it’s important that it’s not completely spontaneous (even if you’re roleplaying a completely crazy character, though I would caution against that in general).

Now that that’s out of the way, I’ll refocus on those two types of character building and attempt to cover them as best I can. Thanks to my disordered rambling, I’ve already started talking about long-term development, so I guess I’ll keep up with that and cover short-term toward the end. Firstly, it should be understood that long-term building will result in the vast majority of all building that your character sees within roleplay. If you feel the need to drop major traumatic events every other thread, then something with your own creativity is probably wrong or you’re not getting nearly enough roleplay and you therefore feel pressured to have SOMETHING happen. This is a dangerous place to be in, and I would say that even if you can’t get a lot of roleplay, better to do what you have well than to rush it and make waste.

However, I did mention that your character will likely always be in the process of building subtly. Character building isn’t strictly about destroying what your character already is, it’s about changing the character in general. If your stoic warrior is always hanging out with other people very similar to himself, then his character will be building as well. In this case, though, unlike the example with the priest, the warrior will find his character fortified instead of worn away. While the priest might push him to be softer over time, if he were to spend all his travels with a group of other stoic warriors just like himself, then he would find it increasingly difficult to depart from the mentality. Fortification is something every character needs in order to have a personality trait actually be a trait; a great example of this that is used frequently is emotional pain with a character. This can take the form of anxiety, suspicion, doubt, cruelty, or any other number of things, but if you take a moment to reasonably ask how it was formed, you can see that even this “negative trait” came to the strength you call upon through a long period of fortification. People usually just summarize this through the history, mostly because actually roleplaying this out is usually more time than people are willing to commit and it can be very depressing, but regardless it’s assumed to be fortified one way or another. I’ve used this example to death, but I’ll return to it once more – growing up in an abusive environment for years will result in a very intense culmination of emotional pain that the character will find very hard to overcome.

With this in mind, it’s important to keep in mind what exactly you’re going to be changing over the long haul with your roleplay. In the most recent example, with that much fortification how difficult do you think it’s going to be for that character to break free from that when you finally set them on that path to do so? The answer should be that it would prove very difficult, because they’ve spent so much time building that up inside themselves. Breaking free should be a very long, difficult process over the culmination of months if not years. How do you roleplay that? Well, no one said this would be easy. However, there is a crutch that people use (perhaps too frequently) that causes the process to go a lot faster. Instead of a long-term contributor, you can introduce, as the writer, a much more emphatic, short-term device. These should certainly be used with extreme caution, but they definitely have a place in the writing process. It makes a story interesting and provides a peaking point, provided there’s enough quality rising action leading up to it.

A quick example though as to what I’m talking about is probably worthy of adding; an event like this takes place only over a few moments but will change your character dramatically in the long run, such as a death, a realization of betrayal, a gift, the birth of a child, and so on. While all of these things may take place over varying lengths, I think it’s fair to say that we’re speaking of something in the short run. They can be positive or negative, and they can have varying levels of shock value, but it is a certain element of surprise that ambushes a character and overpowers your character in a moment. On this note, I would say that you can have varying levels of awareness for the parties involved, and I’ll go through them real “quick”.

Firstly, neither the reader nor the character might see the event coming. These are the most spontaneous events because they have very little rising action, or what rising action is present is aimed at deceiving both reader and character alike. These can be very strong for immersion for the reader and will help them to understand the shock the character at hand may be going through from it. However, because they’re so spontaneous, these ought not to be used excessively. Above all, though, they cannot be spontaneous for the writer himself. If the writer is introducing these things out of boredom, that’s a good cue that the roleplay or the roleplayer is not very good – usually both.

Secondly, the reader may be expecting the event but the character is not. I would say this one has the most common footing in roleplay, and is naturally the most challenging to convey successfully. Usually in this case there is enough foreshadowing that the reader may be clued in to the event, or the reader may have access to information the character does not. In either case, this one is difficult because both writer and reader must have the same level of empathy for the character as in the first case, even if they can no longer easily make the connection themselves. These are easily recognizable in most forms of fiction, and are very important for the story telling aspect.

Thirdly, the reader may be expecting the event, and the character may be as well. These are trickier and I can’t say too much on them mostly out of lack of experience. However, it is obvious that this changes the game slightly. The event may have less of an impact because it is less of a surprise, but the potency of the event should not be missed. A good example of this might be a father expecting a child and finally holding it for the first time; such things radically change a person’s vantage point, and while they can anticipate the event itself, they cannot anticipate the effects of it.

Keep in mind I’m talking about all these events as ones that shape characters with some level of drama. It’s totally possible for events using the same template to happen without necessarily dramatically changing a single character’s life in the process; they’re all basic elements of story-telling. Now that all of these are established, though, I’ll return to my summation of these events as a whole.

The surprise value implicated in each event is important, but more importantly is certainly the event itself. Just because it’s a surprise that you don’t have any milk even after you pour the bowl of dry cereal, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to change your worldview. I’ll come back to “trivial” actions when I finish, though. Anyway, all of these things need to be interpreted by the author as to their affects on the character based on the character’s personality (and consequently their experiences). Events like these may change the character just as quickly as they happen, but often times the change occurs still gradually, as the character becomes used to the reality of what has happened and tries to deal with it internally; a good example of this might be the commonly known stages of grief, where a person comes to terms with what has happened. What’s important, though, is that by the end they’re different!

These events don’t have to be positive, and they don’t have to be just negative; they don’t have to fortify, they might degrade a personality – what’s important is that your character does grow in one direction or another, and you as the author make note of that. As this is taking place, you can usually go into some detail about the process your character is going through internally as this takes place, and both you and the reader can gain some greater insight into the character at hand. Now, in some places this may not be appropriate (roleplay with “character limits” on posts or in other settings), but for the most part I would consider this a very valid level of “meat” to your roleplaying posts. You don’t need to be longwinded about it, but it’s a worthy endeavor to try and showcase some of the internal clockwork that’s going on, especially if you’re roleplaying with someone regularly.

Jeez, I think these get longer each time I write them; go figure. Well, I’ll try and wrap up then. I’m assuming that some level of character building is going on at all times mostly because roleplay (like any story) usually has some significance regardless of the scene. It could be that your character walks away happy or just thinking a little harder on something, or it could be that they walked away shocked; regardless, there is usually a certain level of action. Obviously, not everything that happens will build a character in a noteworthy way. You can use pretty much any action to complement or contrast current elements of a character, though; in the case of the bowl of dry cereal and no milk, if the character is a pessimist he may roll his eyes and conclude that this is clearly something that would only happen to him, or maybe he carries a slightly comedic streak and finds it funny that he would consistently forget to check something like this in advance. It’s pretty trivial and certainly not the most telling incident, but it helps if you think about each event in terms of what effects they’ll have, whether you introduce them as the writer or your reader who is roleplaying with you does. You need to be able to see through the eyes of your own character and gauge how much something would or would not affect them, in both the short and long term. And with that, I will conclude this short novel that hardly scratches the surface on the subject! Hopefully next time will be a (shorter) conclusion entry that goes over some final thoughts and ties up all these aspects of building a character.

Building a Character: Consistency in Roleplay

Now that I’ve finally done the personality section I feel very… relieved. Personalities are most certainly the greatest element of exhaustion in a character sheet when you really get down to it, and writing about them is much the same – and I could still talk for hours on it! But I won’t right now, because there’s still more ground to cover. I’ve come to the opinion that I’m not going to burn myself out on writing this type of thing, because every time I “finish” an entry it’s with the feeling that a day later I could double its length with more information. In short, I’m going to just try and write these whenever I can from now, instead of spacing them, because there’s so much I need to get out of my head! Now, though, I’m going to switch to the building process that involves that actual act of roleplaying, probably two or three sections, starting with consistency and then moving onto character building.

Consistency in roleplay is technically the opposite of character building, but it’s just as important. In a nutshell, the idea is that once you’ve written your lengthy (but concise) character sheet, you must actually make use of it in roleplay by doing what you said you would. Or rather, doing what you said your character would. This idea seems so obvious that you might even wonder why it needs to be brought up, but so often is it tempting to go away from it. There are even times when you should, but how you decide that is important too, so let’s just go over some basics.

Granting your character power they did not have can be very obvious, like using magic when you’ve never mentioned an affinity for it, or a child wielding a great-sword, but where things get nasty is when you start doing it more subtly. For example, say you have a character who has been a very strong mage from birth, and they have been able to defeat foe after foe with their prowess in the arcane. However, one breaks away from their character the moment they draw a melee weapon and fight with it. In terms of the fantasy/medieval genre, swords, axes, hammers, polearms, and the like are all fairly demanding weapons. They’re heavy and awkward to use at first, and unless a character has trained with them and has the strength to be effective, the very notion of picking up a weapon is completely out of the question.

On that note, even if you’ve already specified they carry a weapon and can use it, their skill is also of the highest importance. This is roleplay and we’re using our words to fight one another, should it come to that. You likely aren’t using stat points and move-sets (and if you are then refer to your local guide on the matter) and the only thing stopping you each from being the perfect duelists is your own self-control. If you’re fighting a master swordsman and you merely have training in the art, you’re going to lose. Hope your opponent is gracious, but that’s just the way it’s going to go. People try and come up with all sorts of flowery excuses, how they got lucky just this once (and the next and the next) and managed to pull something off that even they were surprised about, and that’s nice, but it’s also garbage. You’re breaking character and should stop. If you’ve worked your way into a corner and really want to survive the encounter, talk to the person you’re roleplaying with and explain it to them. I’ve never seen them not be gracious about it, even with the most competitive of people. (Similarly, in the future consider exactly what you’re claiming when you call your character a “blademaster” or something of the sort. You’re saying that there’s a tiny percent of everyone in existence who spars with melee weaponry that can even hope to match your talent. Make decisions because you should, not because there’s nothing that says you can’t, but more on that another time.)

So basically the same thing applies to personalities, but, since they’re obviously more difficult, the problems tend to be slighter and less conspicuous. I touched on the idea of staying true to a “loner” character before, and I’ll return to it once as it’s a favorite that is more complicated than most people care to think. Now that you’re a loner, it means you literally don’t like being with people, right? That’s the idea anyway. You’re either uncomfortable with them, or you think you’re better than them, and as a result you’ve locked yourself into the idea that any sort of character interaction is going to be a painful process for your character. At best, your character should only be tolerating the company of others, and if you do it properly then I guarantee you that the loner idea you romanticized is actually quite frustrating, both for the writers of the roleplay, and also for the characters themselves. However, if you start diverging from this, allowing more and more tolerance for your character and even showing a genuine affection for another character, you’re breaking your own character.

If we cannot remain consistent to our own character sheets that we’ve created, and we depart from them simply to make roleplay flow more smoothly, then we’ve missed the idea completely. Roleplay isn’t about you getting satisfaction because you know your character is, it’s about you staying true to your character (Not even just roleplay, but fiction in general). Without consistency in all fields, the very notion of a character falls apart completely and becomes simply what you as the writer feel like at the time. Bad! You must be objective with your character and be prepared to grant them both suffering and pleasure without necessarily giving yourself either. If you’ve written yourself a bitter, condescending character, you’re not going to throw that all under the rug the moment the lovely lady comes walking by, because you as the writer get a thrill from some in-character romance. Your character must stay true to himself, despite your temptations to pull him away, and any allowances you let through should be noted for their irregularity.

Now, I’ve been making some blanket comments about things you’re not allowed to do, and reading it you might start thinking that I’m basically telling you that your character must be a stone wall, incapable of acting more than one way, and that if you the writer is enjoying what they’re writing then something is wrong. As you start adhering more strictly to your character, you’ll begin to that the enjoyment from them comes from watching their life fluctuate, come to fruition, and finally grow before your eyes. I would argue that there’s a much deeper satisfaction in watching your character behave foolishly and slowly come to understand their errors than imposing your own knowledge of a situation into your character so they don’t stumble at all. Having your character do something stupid can be very difficult, and I’ll talk about that specifically another time, but it can quickly grow to be a very interesting thing.

Similarly, regarding the idea that your character can only act one set way, this isn’t true, or else there would be no character building. The important thing for you as the writer is to narrate this process appropriately, emphasizing the growing pains your character will experience as a result of it. Your character who is naturally very distrusting may slowly grow to trust certain individuals, but should it be with hesitance and something that takes a considerable amount of time, as it would for a real person. I would even go so far as to say that most character building takes longer that you usually devote to roleplaying a single character at all, so don’t write one thread, do one scene, and call it good. The more time you invest into the process, the more interesting, immersive, and potent the final change will be. On top of that, you’ll also have a much better understanding of your character because of it.

In closing, I will also say that sometimes you create a character that plays differently than you had intended to. You, of course, should first check to make sure that it’s not just your being preferential to good behavior over bad that causes the difference, but if you find that things you thought would be interesting characteristics to play turn out not to be, then you should act on that. Return to your character sheet and revise appropriately. The act of staying consistent is not so that you would never depart from one character concept, but so that you can use your character sheet as a reliable backbone for how your character actually acts. If you created a cold, ruthless barbarian who favors ale and the character ends up playing out that he’s more of a violent drunk, then re-emphasize that in your character sheet. Consistency leads to quality, and the better quality the roleplay is, the more fun it is.