As a dungeon master, player or very occasional writer of short stories, I have known, and sometimes made, all kinds of characters. And some of those were too good, too handsome, too strong to be true, at the point of stealing the limelight from protagonists.

I didn’t know this kind of character has a name until a drop into my usual irc chatroom, at a time when Testy was talking about them.

When exposed to them, I learned to fear them, hate them and was more uncomfortable into making more characters, struck by the fear I could make one.

Arguably one example of Canon Sue

Now, I am more confident into my own characters, since I have pretty much designed an universe with its cosmology. And I toned down some common tropes usually found in Sues.

So, what are the common Sue traits?

- The Sue is often a self-insert version of the writer.

- Ridiculously beautiful. While it’s expected from female characters, it is becoming a common trait among male Sues too, there they becomes pretty much bishounen. Call that the Sephiroth Effect. This hold all the more true in anime or videogame themed works of fiction. Sorry, no sosies of Rutger Hauer are allowed!

- Alien origins. Not necessarily extra-terrestrial. It can be the last of an extinct specie. Or a half-something, half-elf, half-angel, half-dragon or half-demon. And preferably long-lived, slow-aging race.

- Hint that the Sue could be a blueblood, or even the heir of the throne of the kingdom/empire/world/galaxy/universe.

- The Sue has matured so fucking early that she or he will be a formidable fighter or mage at an impossibly young age, rivaling in skills with the veteran that has fought enough battles to turn a teenager into PTSDed mental wreck, or being even better than the mentionned war weary veteran.

- In addition of impossible fighter or mage skill level, the Sue will speak twenty languages, can speak with animals, befriend mentionned animals, knows the inner workings of political intrigues enough to deal with the backstabbing, plays a wind or string instrument (flute or guitar) and is an occasional poet and philosopher.

- Sometimes, the Sue is ridiculously smart or perceptive like Leto Atreides II. So whatever act he or she will do, it will be always right. She or he is never wrong and everything goes JUST AS PLANNED for them. Leading to ridiculous and rather non-sensical Xanatos Tetris (A plan that has gone JUST AS PLANNED according to another plan within a greater plan, etc…)

- Weapons of choice will be katanas first, ridiculous big swords second (and preferably weight 80 pounds, meaning that mentionned writer has not done his homework, and of course this ridiculously heavy and big sword will be held one-handed like a twig). If the character’s main weapon is a gun, it will be either a pistol, revolver or a shotgun, no lesser caliber than .44 magnum.

- The Mary Sue will often be Jesus-Virgin-Mary-like personality wise. There are the occasional tsundere too. The Gary Stu will always either be cocky, arrogant, tormented. Gary Stu has no business with clowns, really.

- Tragic past IS requirement. This is for sympathy points from the audience AND the cast.

- The Mary Sue or Gary Stu will play the matchmaker OR will be paired with a character who is the crush of the author of the fictionnal work, regardless of what was shown in canon. If mentionned character was already paired, the lover, girlfriend, boyfriend or love interest will be either shafted, in best cases, or portrayed as jealous, mean and petty.

- If sex comes into the picture, sex with Sue will be the Best of the Best. In the same league of a Rocco Siffredi or Anita Dark ascended to Godhood, mixed with Casanova or Visual Novel Bishoujo sweets words of love.

- In the case of fanfictions, the Sue will steal the limelight of canon characters, pushing them into the background, they will exist only to make the Sue look good.

- Every events has something to do with the Sue: an ominous comet, a joint raid from ninja and pirates, the collective death of the crows of the Tower of London, the eruption of the Fujiyama, a prophecy of Nostradamus coming true, the Templar Knights’ Great Plan has set in motion, the Sue has a role to play in all of that.

- Canon characters will fight or die for the Sue.

- The Sue will die a Jesus death. And often this death will be done in a fashion that doesn’t disfigure the character to the point he or she cannnot be identified, or the corpse is not seen.

- Sometime, the Sue will come back to life or come back in spirit to bring comfort to everyone who has mourned her or him. And they WILL mourn the Sue.

If your planned character has fit some of those tropes, you’d need to step back and think about what to change. It doesn’t hurt to have your character reviewed by neutral people or people familiar with the franchise you intended to insert in. The worst danger is to bathe yourself in self-praise or coming up to your audience while raving how your character will be and is awesome. You will need to humble yourself and understand that your awesome is not someone else’s awesome (this is the common motive of sue writers).

Famous writers or designers are not above this tho, here some examples:

- Lacus Clyne is an example of Mary Sue. Be amused at how her defenders and fans are trying to justify all of Lacus’ Godmode knew-it-all planned-it-all bullshit.

- Naraku.

- Sol Badguy. At least Daisuke Ishiwatari has the honesty to admit he based Sol on himself, as an ideal version.

- Elric. Another one whose the author has the honesty to admit it.

This post should not scare you into making your characters. It aspire instead into opening your eyes on defaults of your creations. No creation are flawless, nothing is. You will never get your character right at the first try, she or he will go through several changes influenced by your interests of the moment. The danger imo is when you really rave to yourself about how your ideas and character are good and awesome. My suggestion is to mentally distance yourself from your creation as much as possible. Read more books or comics, watch more movies, TV series, cartoons or anime. Read. And read more. This may bring more substance to your characters. Then ask yourself “Do my character need this? Do I want him to be like that?” And always have someone to critcize it.

And one last thing, many of the most loved characters has fit at least one of these tropes, it doesn’t mean they are bad characters. Guts from Berserk has a ridiculously big sword, but it is justified by his past, background story and the monsters he has to fight; moreover he actually put strenght while swinging his Dragonslayer and he is physically fit to wield it. Near has managed to top Light Yagami’s Xanatos Tetris, but he was the designed successor of L, not to mention help from Mello that has brough the final piece of the puzzle. Elric is nothing w/o his Stormbringer and life-support drugs. Dante is a half-demon and is rather cocky. Kenshiro is a walking Buddha + Jesus + Mad Max + Bruce Lee. It could turn them into Mary Sue/Gary Stu, but it all boiled down to how the author executed it. If the mentionned characters were poorly executed in poorly written stories, they would have been in the Mary Sue/Gary Stu Hall of Shame. It’s like having the recipe for a puttanesca pasta, the recipe may be universal but you can make a bad one or a very good one. It’s all in the execution.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 11:37 pm and is filed under Role Playing Game, Uncategorized.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.