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[Veiki]

I've always felt what makes something Mary Sue as a subjective thing, that really comes down to intent and execution. It's the intent of implying how remarkably special a character is to the point of stretching credulity.

Reading through this, I don't see what's Mary Sue about having a capsuleer character with say a Naval background on its own, for example.

However it would probably stretch credulity for me if said character not only graduated from the Navy, but they graduated with 101% grades because they were top of the class of all the people who also graduated top of their class at age 14. Then they became Top Grand Admiral of Admirals at age 18 because it was secretly actually they who defeated the Minmatar Fleet over Mekhios and Jamyl Sarum was so thankful to them they made sweet love (but you don't know that because it's a secret) and gave them personal capsuleer training.

Then again, compared to the rest of humanity in Eve, a capsuleer by default comes with what could be said to be Mary Sue aspects. What with the whole having unique genetics, superior intellect and willpower, and so on. That's just on the first day, never mind when you're rolling around in mind boggling expensive ships and celestial death machines.

[Elmund Egivand]

If your character is so special that he gets special and positive treatment with no effort and when others do not like the character he is wrong and bad, your character is officially a Mary Sue.

[John Revenent]

Is being a commander with lots of soldiers so Mary Sue when you actually gave yourself the means to achieve it concretely ?

I think it's a bit Mary Sue to start with that sort of special background, I'm not sure I'd roll a new character with such a background now.  Or if I did I would much more place emphasis on the baseliner special person background meaning very little to other capsuleers and it giving them zero capsuleer reputation.

Yeah this. Like, JFR claiming to have a small private baseliner army? That's pretty reasonable. Having Newplayer 287 claim at day 2 out of the Science and Trade school that they have a private baseliner army is a bit more out there.

I haz army.. army of JFR cultists. Confirmed.

[Halcyon]

Is being a commander with lots of soldiers so Mary Sue when you actually gave yourself the means to achieve it concretely ?

I think it's a bit Mary Sue to start with that sort of special background, I'm not sure I'd roll a new character with such a background now.  Or if I did I would much more place emphasis on the baseliner special person background meaning very little to other capsuleers and it giving them zero capsuleer reputation.

Yeah this. Like, JFR claiming to have a small private baseliner army? That's pretty reasonable. Having Newplayer 287 claim at day 2 out of the Science and Trade school that they have a private baseliner army is a bit more out there.

I haz army.. army of JFR cultists. Confirmed.

I've kept Halcy from picking up anything like staff for a while, beyond the obvious ship crews and people who mind your stuff. Still trying to keep it modest; 20 man security team, kitchen staff, waiters, maids, barmen, a band...etc...
Caldari RPers should give me names for my security team and specify male/female

[Silver Night]

As I think others have mentioned, Eve tends to make it a bit tricky in that capsuleers are, by default, not an average citizen. Unfathomable power and wealth, etc means that a number of the metrics you might use to judge a character in another game, or the protagonist in your Twilight fan fic, don't apply. Other metrics though, I think, do still apply.

I don't think I've got a lot of Mary Sue type stuff with Silver, in particular. He is largely a product of the character creator, and although his story has at times gotten a bit exotic I think most of it developed in a pretty natural way. Medical training and being a pilot might have been stretching it, but then again being a pilot is how he segued into being a capsuleer and he's had a long time since then with fancy implants and essentially unlimited resources to pursue his interests in the medical field. Plus there was the whole Happy Chip thing and I needed him to have a bit of a useful background for that.    Also, I try and make sure that if my characters are very good at some things, they are terrible at others. Silver is great at press releases and pretty good on rhetoric, but fairly terrible at relating to anyone on a personal level. He would also get his ass kicked in person by almost anyone, can't really hold his liquor, and has a sense of style that runs to suits and other suits that are just a slightly different color.

Hilion rather intentionally hits some Mary Sue tropes. He was intended from the start as a bit over the top. He's over 100 years old, he's constantly practicing substance abuse (well, I say practicing, but he's really an expert by now), he has a weird and rather variable accent, he's an unusual height, etc. On the other hand, I think he is lacking an important Mary Sue ingredient, which is that noone is expected to take him very seriously. He will tell you, with a straight face, that he once escaped the clutches of a hyperintelligent Fedo the size of a VW Beetle and that there is a planet where he is worshiped as a deity and that he is a Brutor (in spite of being a very short Khanid).


One thing I think has been mentioned that is cool in Eve is that you don't need to make up a crazy story for your character to be a special snowflake - you can sometimes have the opportunity to do it through the game. You can actually be an expert if corp infiltration, or have your own industrial empire. Some of us have also had the opportunity to participate in big events or bits of Eve history whether player or CCP generated.

[Gottii]

Lets see.  Gottii is chalk full of Mary Sueism, though like Silver, some of it was from the character generator.

Slave...check!  (Mostly from the Character Generator. Slave Child gave good PER back in the day, though I screwed up reading the background, thought Gottii was rescued as a child, not smuggled out as an infant)

Martial arts...check!  (admittedly, martial traditions are the entirety of Brutor PF pretty much)

Huge size...check!  (part of this was "brutors are intimidating in the flesh", part of it was lazy characterization early on, and eventually I lived it as a metaphor for a slave whos body isnt really his own)

Criminality...check!  (figured an ex-slave would be hard on his luck, even in the Republic)

Special forces training...check!  (I wanted Gottii to be a hardened/broken veteran of a penal battalion who was lucky to be alive....then CCP made sure to clarify that the Valklear were spec op badasses....so I had to go with that....I loved that I could simply not talk about it )

Raised by someone else other than his parents....check!  (character generator again)

Sexually abused as a child....check!  (slavery sucks, its institutionalized abuse, sexual abuse is part and parcel of any meaningful representation of it)

Tragic loss of family members....check! 

Unique genetic legacy....check!  (granted, I made it a standard high-gee strain of the Amarrian eugenics program, which would make sense if youre trying to make slaves for various planets)

I'm sure I'm missing some.  I kinda tried to make him extreme, but portray him as human as possible.

[Jandice Ymladris]

Not really at home with the terms 'Mary-Sue' and 'Peter Pan-isms' Guess I live a sheltered life? Could someone explain me what they mean?

[Elmund Egivand]

Mary Sue is a character type in which the character is essentially flawless, perfect in every way, loved by anything and everything and may or may not be omnipotent, all without exerting effort by the character.

Peter Pan-ism refers to ability to live without growing old.

Both are, I believe, designed for wish-fulfillment. 

[Gottii]

Mary Sue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue

[Gaven Lok ri]

Is being a commander with lots of soldiers so Mary Sue when you actually gave yourself the means to achieve it concretely ?

I think it's a bit Mary Sue to start with that sort of special background, I'm not sure I'd roll a new character with such a background now.  Or if I did I would much more place emphasis on the baseliner special person background meaning very little to other capsuleers and it giving them zero capsuleer reputation.

Yeah this. Like, JFR claiming to have a small private baseliner army? That's pretty reasonable. Having Newplayer 287 claim at day 2 out of the Science and Trade school that they have a private baseliner army is a bit more out there.

I haz army.. army of JFR cultists. Confirmed.

I've kept Halcy from picking up anything like staff for a while, beyond the obvious ship crews and people who mind your stuff. Still trying to keep it modest; 20 man security team, kitchen staff, waiters, maids, barmen, a band...etc...
Caldari RPers should give me names for my security team and specify male/female

Something interesting to think about with retinues is that for some characters having a retinue makes them *less* of a special snowflake if they come from classes that are supposed to have lackeys.

That is, the princess that refuses the help of her servants is a larger than life character in my view. An Amarrian holder should have a small army of servants as a matter of course, and you are making a bit of a statement if you play the Amarrian holder who doesn't have any servants. Conversely, a character that was born in poverty having a retinue is saying that they have this group of people following them despite not coming from a class where that is normal.

As a rule, I think it is really useful to identify what "normal" is for a character of your chars background. You don't have to always follow normal to avoid problems, but you should be aware when you are breaking out of the normal for your character.

[Silver Night]

Is being a commander with lots of soldiers so Mary Sue when you actually gave yourself the means to achieve it concretely ?

I think it's a bit Mary Sue to start with that sort of special background, I'm not sure I'd roll a new character with such a background now.  Or if I did I would much more place emphasis on the baseliner special person background meaning very little to other capsuleers and it giving them zero capsuleer reputation.

Yeah this. Like, JFR claiming to have a small private baseliner army? That's pretty reasonable. Having Newplayer 287 claim at day 2 out of the Science and Trade school that they have a private baseliner army is a bit more out there.

I haz army.. army of JFR cultists. Confirmed.

I've kept Halcy from picking up anything like staff for a while, beyond the obvious ship crews and people who mind your stuff. Still trying to keep it modest; 20 man security team, kitchen staff, waiters, maids, barmen, a band...etc...
Caldari RPers should give me names for my security team and specify male/female

Something interesting to think about with retinues is that for some characters having a retinue makes them *less* of a special snowflake if they come from classes that are supposed to have lackeys.

That is, the princess that refuses the help of her servants is a larger than life character in my view. An Amarrian holder should have a small army of servants as a matter of course, and you are making a bit of a statement if you play the Amarrian holder who doesn't have any servants. Conversely, a character that was born in poverty having a retinue is saying that they have this group of people following them despite not coming from a class where that is normal.

As a rule, I think it is really useful to identify what "normal" is for a character of your chars background. You don't have to always follow normal to avoid problems, but you should be aware when you are breaking out of the normal for your character.

This is an interesting point I was previously aware of but hadn't really thought much about. I don't know that I would go so far as to call just deviation from the norm for someone of a particular background being a 'Mary sueish', but I know it is something I do try to keep some track of in my characters. My thinking is that if their story is the same story that you might see repeated over and over among New Eden's inhabitants, I don't need to worry very much. If it is something that you aren't likely to see repeated, then that is when I need to be more careful to maintain its integrity.

[Lyn Farel]

Mary sue-ism and my absolute will to get away from it made me bring over and over at first a lot of changes that eventually leaded to a convoluted character background to go around said mary sueisms... It can be a nightmare when you are dealing with your first character that you started befire knowing a lot about the PF itself besides the basics... :\

[Velarra]

Well. In mild defense, I originally built Vel with an eye to Achura attribute and skill distribution points given at creation time due to history & background choices before taking RP or any particular character concept into mind.

Which led to the following 2-isms:
Ancestry: Monks
Occupation/professional background: Special Forces

When Malkalen occurred character build background aside, she was otherwise rather vanilla and mundane. It impacted her personal life and family quite acutely. There were losses. In defense, she's never really publicly dragged it around with her or cried about it too much.

Later she performed a meek attempt at assisted suicide of her mortal body while piloting a shuttle. The cause stemmed from a particularly early career mission. Ultimately, the drama was due to a rather naive perception she held of the State and its relationship to the Mega Corps. Yes, Vel, yes. Megacorps do occasionally fire on State vessels and employ capsuleers to do the deed.

[Halcyon]

Something interesting to think about with retinues is that for some characters having a retinue makes them *less* of a special snowflake if they come from classes that are supposed to have lackeys.

That is, the princess that refuses the help of her servants is a larger than life character in my view. An Amarrian holder should have a small army of servants as a matter of course, and you are making a bit of a statement if you play the Amarrian holder who doesn't have any servants. Conversely, a character that was born in poverty having a retinue is saying that they have this group of people following them despite not coming from a class where that is normal.

As a rule, I think it is really useful to identify what "normal" is for a character of your chars background. You don't have to always follow normal to avoid problems, but you should be aware when you are breaking out of the normal for your character.

Background wise, Halcy would have been accustomed to servants, then gotten used to not having many and not trusting them. Even in her current situation I have her deliberately avoid verbal interaction with her staff.

[Pieter Tuulinen]

Mary Sue is a character type in which the character is essentially flawless, perfect in every way, loved by anything and everything and may or may not be omnipotent, all without exerting effort by the character.

Peter Pan-ism refers to ability to live without growing old.

Both are, I believe, designed for wish-fulfillment.

It is a peculiarly defining trait for Mary Sues that even their flaws make their characters stronger and more admirable. Too loyal. Too generous. Too hardworking on behalf of others.