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[Lyn Farel]

Found it pretty fun.

I got a total of 20.

[Saede Riordan]

Huh, I got 9.

I was worried my score would be a lot higher then that.

[Lyn Farel]

There were a few questions where I had difficulties to answer though. The few about the powers of the character compared to others (like "can your character wtfpwn everyone one on one?"). I wasn't sure if I had to consider it like a capsuleer in space or like a capsuleer in station, which means radically opposite results for me.

I choose a capsuleer outside the pod since it's all about capsuleer characters that would all have to pick that point if it was about our abilities in space.

[Silver Night]

The only problem with tests like this is that (and I caught myself doing this a couple times) you tend to try to rationalize around answering honestly - for the same reason you might not think a character you make is a Mary Sue to begin with. (Well, sure, they have x and y, but it's a special case, honest!)

[Lyn Farel]

Anyway that was only one or two questions, nothing more for me.

What I find interesting is not the much the result but the things listed here. It is funny to see that a certain amount of them are actually good plot devices, but that can also tend to mary sue-ism.

[Adreena Madeveda]

Rationalizing everything I could, I came up with a score of 5 for Adreena ; not rationalizing at all, the score was of 18 :p

[Esna Pitoojee]

I ran through this three times and came up with answers ranging from 12 to -1 (wat?).

The main issue I ran into is that EVE as a setting is so fantastically grimdark, and capsuleers so fantastically beyond the normal population that thing which would otherwise be marysueish ("Ability to kick around hundreds of badguys", "has oodles of money", etc) are perfectly normal in the setting. I paused more often to consider 'but doesn't everyone have that ability/trait?' than I did rationalizing for Esna's specific trait.

[Lyn Farel]

-1 is probably due to the last part with the character weaknesses. It reduces your score instead of adding to it.

I should try to run it by rationalizing like you say.

[Shaalira]

I ended up with 2 points, but only because of a few De-suifiers.

One thing is questions like these:

Does your character always have money to spend on frivolities or whatever xe really wants or needs at the time?

Which apply to all capsuleers really, so it's part of the generic lore rather than a Mary Sue choice by an EVE-O player.  (Though you can argue that the nature of capsuleer lore pushes people into Mary Sue archetypes).

As for questions like "ability to kick around hundreds of badguys," I think it depends on if you make it a part of your RP.  If you casually talk about how you're wiping out battleship after battleship in missions, you've made it a part of your character and should tick it off.

[Saede Riordan]

Remember from the test description itself, it said not to check an answer if something is in line with the general abilities of people in-universe. Magic might make you mary sue in eve, but in D&D obviously not. Massive oodles of cash might make you a Mary Sue in D&D but obviously not in eve. I think 'mary-sueism' is at least somewhat rooted in how much and how significantly the character departs from the general abilities of an average person (or for eve, an average capsuleer) in universe.

Context is important.

[Shaalira]

Saede's right here, I think.

A character is a Mary Sue based upon the artistic choices of the player-author.  Mary Sue-isms provided by the gameworld itself involve no decision by the player-author.  Capsuleers have immense wealth and are vastly superior to baseliners in space combat.  This is the state of the lore, and not any conscious decision by a player-author when writing up their character.

(Admittedly, some players more gleefully embrace this aspect of the lore than others.)

I'm still interested in the influence of a universe of Mary Sues, where the lore is such that a player-character by default takes up many of the qualities which define a Mary Sue in other settings.  I'm curious about the commonality of the archetype in, say, City of Heroes.

But since a Mary Sue is, by definition, the intrusion of the author's self and wish-fulfilling aspirations into the character, it's truly only the player-author's choices that matter in testing for a Mary Sue.

[Silver Night]

Well, also, it can be a fine line (particularly in a setting like Eve) because some of the things are occasionally useful plot devices. It can be not what, but how it is used that makes a Mary Sue.

[Saede Riordan]

Well, also, it can be a fine line (particularly in a setting like Eve) because some of the things are occasionally useful plot devices. It can be not what, but how it is used that makes a Mary Sue.

It really comes down to how you use anything yeah. Take for example Saede: She is heavily, heavily cybernetically augmented. That's not something that all capsuleers are as a standard of PF, so it could easily be a mary sueism. I could have her get into bar fights where she's shooting lasers out of her arms and bending firearms in half and such. But I don't. In fact, I don't really do RP like that at all. Instead, she does things like use a holoprojector in her palm to display images when she needs to illustrate something during a conversation, or light a cigarette with a small torch in one of her fingertips. It gets relegated to basically character flavour, and doesn't effect much, and thus overall, people seem to actually think its pretty cool to do.

A lot of stuff is like that, its easy to make something ridiculous if you let it be ridiculous. Saying your character owns and knows how to use a sword is completely different then saying you're a master swordsmen that can swing a blade so fast you can cut a reinforced bulkhead in half.

Especially in an MMO setting like eve, you can really get away with quite a lot. It just comes down to how you make use of something, and whether you use it to force your awesomeness down people's throats and such.

[Lyn Farel]

Giving it a new go I got an 8.

[Mitara Newelle]

13