Characters and Originality: A Discussion

[Cruxis Blue Angel]

Clefairy told me this'd be all right to post, so here goes!

So, since I've just recently started getting into the whole text RP scene, I thought I'd want to discuss with players that I'd be talking to about something a lot of the internet has problems with. Original characters, called OCs for short, and the concept of the "Mary Sue". I don't know how many of you guys are familiar with what the "Mary Sue" is, which is why I'd like to talk to all of you guys about them.

First off, a link: http://www.katfeete.net/writing/marysue.html

That link is to a general writer's Mary Sue character test. You put in the character's name and gender, then check off the all of the items that apply to that character. At the end, they will tell you how close you are to that character and give you hints towards refining him or her towards being a more unique character overall.

How do you guys come up with your characters, anyway? Do you make an avatar for yourself? Do you create an alternate persona to live out your fantasies with? Or do you just go with what sounds cool to you?

Discuss!  

[Suzuri Heinze]

When it comes to playing as characters from anime or video games, I go with characters that I feel I'm "connected" to. Characters that I felt I had an attachment with when watching the show or playing the game. Like the characters I posted here, Lyra and Silver, are from Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver. The game has eaten a considerable amount of my time. If you play the girl character, you ARE Lyra for all practical purposes. The "rival" in the game is Silver whether you play as a boy or a girl. I've spent a lot of time with both characters, and they mean quite a bit to me because of the attachment I have to that world. This will make me want to play them more accurately, and I'll have more fun with them, too.

But for original characters, I tend not to play them very often BECAUSE of the whole Mary Sue stigma. You could even say that Lyra herself is a Mary Sue because she's the player's avatar in the game, but that's really debatable since they gave her a personality in the Pokemon anime. Flamboyant and annoying, yes, but she did have a distinct personality. So, really, it goes either way.

A lot of people make mistakes like wanting to make an alternate persona for themselves to live through and this causes a lot of problems for both the player of that character and the players interacting with them. It's hard to not give that character too much power or special abilities when you just want an escape, you know...

I've made characters like that, but I tend to keep them to myself. For my stories, I'd rather try not to insert myself. Especially after reading enough flames over Mary Sues over the years.  

[Suzuricho]

Well, this is discussion certainly deserves merit, yes. I like seeing actual discussion between roleplayers. You get to know them better this way and can react to their characters better when you see how they are created.

Though that might be a good Mary Sue test, I reccomend this one: http://www.onlyfiction.net/marysue2.html as it is more thorough and has more questions than the one you suggested, OP. Yes, I tried the one you suggested, but I just prefer this one.

As far as original characters go, yes, I have made many a Mary Sue over the years. Every character named anything from Ran-Chan, to Ran, to Randalia are all blatant self-inserts and I'm not ashamed of that. I know which characters are self-inserts and which aren't. Melodye is a little on the fence. She's most certainly a Mary Sue, but she's not exactly a self-insert as much as the others before.

I'd like to say that I can create fairly interesting characters. I just use them for my actual novels and stories. You guys don't know about Stella Fuleena, Shinko, or most of my other characters from my books or the games that I've made, like Pyra, Pricilla, or Samantha. I used the tests as references to creating characters that aren't self-inserts or Mary Sues. Why? I don't roleplay as my story characters and vice-versa. My truly original characters aren't for roleplay, because, frankly, I don't take it as seriously. These characters aren't meant for RP, so they won't be used for RP.  

[Cruxis Blue Angel]

You don't take RP as seriously as your actual writing?  

[Suzuricho]

Cruxis Blue Angel

You don't take RP as seriously as your actual writing?

Hell no!

The thing is, when I write an actual story, I get to write all the characters in that story. All of those characters are mine. I get to manipulate larger and more diverse plots than typing out a roleplay, because the different posts will twist the plots so many different ways because of different people posting. The stories of an RP are NEVER as good as an actual cohesive story by one author because of that. You can always tell when different people take over! I have a distinct way of writing which is different than how any of my friends write, especially my RP friends. They use different words, different dictions, and have completely different writing styles. Why would someone take an RP as seriously as writing an actual story?  

[TheDarkLordKane87]

my dark lord kane character is my design i've been working on him for years. he originally started off as master Rothus Kane Wildfire in a ninja rp that i use to play but over time i tweaked and changed him into what he is now. I've worked on him so long that i took on that name and title as a nickname.  

[Cruxis Blue Angel]

TheDarkLordKane87

my dark lord kane character is my design i've been working on him for years. he originally started off as master Rothus Kane Wildfire in a ninja rp that i use to play but over time i tweaked and changed him into what he is now. I've worked on him so long that i took on that name and title as a nickname.

Wouldn't that be the same as making the Dark Lord Kane a self-insert, though?

...and wow, ninjas are distinctly Japanese but your ninja character didn't have a Japanese name. That's almost as bad as the anime fans wanting a Japanese name for everything but the characters aren't Japanese at all.

The key points to characters themselves are that they grow over the course of the story regardless of how ethnically correct your names might be. If a character does not grow, what is the point of the story at all? There must also be conflict of some sort that must be resolved over the course of said story or it will stagnate and go absolutely nowhere.

This is the problem with a lot of RP that I've seen as of late. All the characters are cookie cutter, copy pasted walks of perfection that are involved in nothing at all. Which makes it more than boring.  

[Suzuricho]

Cruxis Blue Angel

TheDarkLordKane87

my dark lord kane character is my design i've been working on him for years. he originally started off as master Rothus Kane Wildfire in a ninja rp that i use to play but over time i tweaked and changed him into what he is now. I've worked on him so long that i took on that name and title as a nickname.

Wouldn't that be the same as making the Dark Lord Kane a self-insert, though?

...and wow, ninjas are distinctly Japanese but your ninja character didn't have a Japanese name. That's almost as bad as the anime fans wanting a Japanese name for everything but the characters aren't Japanese at all.

The key points to characters themselves are that they grow over the course of the story regardless of how ethnically correct your names might be. If a character does not grow, what is the point of the story at all? There must also be conflict of some sort that must be resolved over the course of said story or it will stagnate and go absolutely nowhere.

This is the problem with a lot of RP that I've seen as of late. All the characters are cookie cutter, copy pasted walks of perfection that are involved in nothing at all. Which makes it more than boring.

Cruxis, you might find this a very informative read: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue

Pretty much everything you've been talking about is there in this one article. I suggest everyone else check it out, too.  

[Cruxis Blue Angel]

Lady Suzuri, why do I get the feeling you're annoyed at me? confused  

[Suzuri Heinze]

heart Cruxis, your avatar... heart

Err. Excuse me. *cough*

I'm not annoyed in the least, honestly. What has been discussed here is very relevant to the world of Roleplay. Characters that are taken from fandom aren't played correctly. Characters made to exist within fandom aren't made correctly and thus throw the rest of the world out of whack. Then you have people who just throw themselves into the mix with self-insert author avatar Mary Sues, and that, well, that's just more than annoying.

Even if you don't play as OCs, you still have to roleplay correctly. The point of RP is to "wear the skin" of a character, and act as if you are said character - be it in a table top pen 'n' paper style, text style, or even through a video game RPG. You have to act as if you are that character correctly or it throws the whole thing off!  

[Cruxis Blue Angel]

Suzuri Heinze

heart Cruxis, your avatar... heart

Err. Excuse me. *cough*

I'm not annoyed in the least, honestly. What has been discussed here is very relevant to the world of Roleplay. Characters that are taken from fandom aren't played correctly. Characters made to exist within fandom aren't made correctly and thus throw the rest of the world out of whack. Then you have people who just throw themselves into the mix with self-insert author avatar Mary Sues, and that, well, that's just more than annoying.

Even if you don't play as OCs, you still have to roleplay correctly. The point of RP is to "wear the skin" of a character, and act as if you are said character - be it in a table top pen 'n' paper style, text style, or even through a video game RPG. You have to act as if you are that character correctly or it throws the whole thing off!

Okay, my lady, I understand your point.

Hey, bringing up video game RPGs is moot. It's not like you can control what a character says in Final Fantasy or Tales, y'know.  

[Suzuri Heinze]

Cruxis Blue Angel

Suzuri Heinze

heart Cruxis, your avatar... heart

Err. Excuse me. *cough*

I'm not annoyed in the least, honestly. What has been discussed here is very relevant to the world of Roleplay. Characters that are taken from fandom aren't played correctly. Characters made to exist within fandom aren't made correctly and thus throw the rest of the world out of whack. Then you have people who just throw themselves into the mix with self-insert author avatar Mary Sues, and that, well, that's just more than annoying.

Even if you don't play as OCs, you still have to roleplay correctly. The point of RP is to "wear the skin" of a character, and act as if you are said character - be it in a table top pen 'n' paper style, text style, or even through a video game RPG. You have to act as if you are that character correctly or it throws the whole thing off!

Okay, my lady, I understand your point.

Hey, bringing up video game RPGs is moot. It's not like you can control what a character says in Final Fantasy or Tales, y'know.

Looks like I have to teach someone the meaning of the acronym RPG!

Okay, Kratos-cosplayer, listen carefully. A roleplaying game lets you make decisions. Final Fantasy may be considered a JRPG, but the name is a misnomer. In the typical JRPG, you don't make decisions to alter the story or the characters because it's easier to tell a story that way, y'see? The Japanese are very intent on telling their story, and the way the player interacts is by controlling the battles. In many systems, the game itself will control what each character learns in battle.

Let's take the game you're cosplaying from as an example. Tales of Symphonia's characters learn skills for battle based on their unique fighting style. Raine Sage learns healing spells and light based attack spells. Her brother is an attack mage, and learns elemental attack spells. Then you have characters like Lloyd Irving or Presea Combatir who learns no magic at all because they fight using brute strength. Do you see my point, man? You don't actually RP as these characters. Or what about the classic Final Fantasy IV? Rosa is the healer. Why? Because she's the one that learns healing spells. In the story of the game she's the hero's love interest and she even states that she's a white mage in training so she can back up her lover in battle when she needs him. There is NO roleplaying going on here. What so ever. You control them in battle to have a bit of interaction, and then you get to play through a very anime-eqse movie for anywhere between 20 to 100 hours depending on the game you're playing.

Now, in many western RPGs, where the game is not story driven but character driven (let's take my personal favorite Etrian Odyssey for this) the game is more about RP than anything. Check this. In EO, you control a guild of characters you make yourself and you have to "grow" them as they level up by placing skill points where you think they should go, to symbolize what they studied as they were leveling. They don't tell you how to unlock skills here. You have to figure it out, buy a strategy guide, or consult the internet for help - and trust me, when in some battles to win you absolutely must have a skill at level 5 and no higher or it will HURT you, then you might want to consult some help... anyway~ my point is even though there's less story in games like EO, the fact that the player has choices to determine how the characters grow is more RP than a game where you learn skills based on what level you got after a battle ends.

No matter what, Cruxis, no matter what - Rosa always learns Holy at level 48 in FFIV. It is not roleplaying. It is experiencing how she grows as she studies deeper and deeper into the career of her choice, backed up by the emotionally driven narrative.

...

NOW! Tell me that video games don't count again! C'mon, you're challenging the woman who makes video games her life! Especially in the ROLEPLAYING GENRE.  

[Cruxis Blue Angel]

gonk

Ahh, Suzuri... I didn't mean to incur your wrath...

I wonder what Gaby would have to say about this?  

[Suzuri Heinze]

Hahaha, that's an amusing thought. What would Gaby say? xd

Y'know, I hear he wants to start a soccer RP, but most soccer players don't like RP and vice versa. Of course, he'd want to play my beloved Heinze! scream Since that's his cosplay.  

[Guardian Gaby]

Suzuri Heinze

Hahaha, that's an amusing thought. What would Gaby say? xd

Y'know, I hear he wants to start a soccer RP, but most soccer players don't like RP and vice versa. Of course, he'd want to play my beloved Heinze! scream Since that's his cosplay.

Su-Zu-Riiiiiiii...

Why are you talking about me?

And yeah, I'd love to start a soccer RP. Even if it's just about a vagabond soccer player, lookin' for love.