Mary Sues and Gary Stus
A Mary Sue is a general term for someone who is playing a character who has breached the social contract/suspension of disbelief of a roleplaying group/story to the detriment of the roleplay/story itself.
That’s about as simple as we can make it. However this in and of itself covers many different facets.
There are many different things that feed into the creation of a Mary Sue, allowing them to rise like a swamp monster from the sewers, and we will cover some of the major ones you see show up, and how to avoid them! The more of these you see in your roleplaying, the worse a Mary Sue you are playing. A lot of these things might cross over with simply bad roleplaying, some of them are okay in certain situations. Talk with someone you respect, and see if they are made uncomfortable by your character if you have any worries. If several people pipe up, check yourself before you wreck yourself. Either your roleplaying style doesn’t mesh with that group, or you have a personal problem.
Remember: As always, these can be okay with enough backstory, history, and reasoning. However, here are why they can be problems.
Popularity
So first things first, how awesome is your character? Like, the most awesome? So cool everyone wants to be their friend, or so badass that friends are thrown to the side never to be seen again? There’s a problem with going to the extreme on both of these.
If your character has not interacted with others, and yet your homepage says “everyone loves them!” then you have an issue right off the bat. Any character who is liked by every single person is either a 2D character without any flaws or good things about them or lying. If bad people are just “jealous” you may want to check yourself.
For one thing, if your character is perfect, how are you going to get any character growth for a roleplay started? It comes off shallow, and badly thought out. For another, you cannot tell people what to think of your character without ever interacting. You can’t ever tell another person how they are supposed to feel in any case, this is what we like to call “free will” in the biz
If you state even the bad guys love your character, you’re in deep shit. Now you’re messing with canon personalities, and people who play those characters won’t like it. You’ll be in hostile territory immediately if you assume anything, let alone a relationship with another roleplayer. People will hate you to spite you. You’ve made a character without giving them any conflict, who can deal with everyone. That means you have no room for sub-plots, no room for growth.
If the characters YOU personally dislike are the ones who hate your character, even if it doesn’t match up with their personality in play? Even worse. This shows you cannot keep yourself out of your writing enough to keep the characters separate, or that you have a vendetta towards making them look bad for some reason. You need to have believable relationships with give, take, and the occasional fight. Even if that fighting is just a friendly rivalry.
If your character is absolutely hated by everyone you may be falling into the Anti-Sue, which is still a Sue. You’ve probably heard of Sues if you’ve gone to this extreme, but it’s just as bad. If no one likes your character in character, how are you going to get any play? No one will want to roleplay with you, and your character will mope around on the sidelines like a worthless lump. No one will trust them, any roleplay in a closed room would never open their doors to you, and you’re going to be shut out.
It’s one thing to be a lone wolf character, a character that kind of grates on people, but to openly make a character so despised that no one can interact with them on any level? Bad idea broski. You’ve made a stagnant character who cannot interact except badly, and will not gain character growth. Plus, as mentioned above, you shouldn’t tell people what THEY think of your character. You should let people have their own decisions.
If you’re writing and the major plot-arc is how everyone hates you except that special flower you fall in love with and marry, A.) no one wants to read it. B.) It’s actually a show of low self-esteem and is kind of worrying. C.) You’re coming off desperate. It’s not a good place to be all told, and you may want to branch out and consider making friends.
Attention
Do you need attention on your character 24/7? Do you make a big show of being injured, or bored, or throwing a hissy fit to get people to pay attention to you? If any of this sounds like you, or if you’re sighing loudly in a corner and trying to make people ask you what is wrong, you are an Attention-Monger, and likely heading towards being a Mary Sue. Instead, you should get involved in an interesting creative way, as a support character.
If someone else’s big scene is going on and you take it away from them, to put it simply, you are a total jerk. That’s just not something you should do. Instead, let them have their time in the sun. Ask questions that let their character shine. When dealing with problems, let them solve the solutions before you step all over them. In the same vein, if someone is always the one you’re catering too, take some time to shine yourself! It’s okay to have time where you’re driving the story.
If you’re writing a story and it follows your character along, it’s one thing. But if you show up for every single major event that the other characters have survived for no reason, you may have a problem. Let them have their adventures, don’t have to be there for every major plot point. Read about in a newspaper, hear about it from a friend, badger them on their free-time we never see in play! It’s okay to be a part of their lives and story if you’re going to throw your character in the mess anyways ,but don’t try to ruin what makes them who they are. If there’s a problem they can solve themselves, don’t solve it for them. Don’t always be the kidnap victim. Don’t take down the monsters that could have made them great, unless it’s a plot point made specifically for your character.
Martyr yourself at your own risk. If everyone is crying over your corpse mid-battle while in danger; you’re doing it wrong. If they mention you in passing afterwards, or if a character with a believable relationship to yours cries about it, all the better. Don’t make the world begin and end with you. But if he likes you enough, and the the readers can believe it, go ahead and make your death his berserk button and let him save the day!
Powers
Limit yourself on the powers. Have a light touch. A strength here or there, different enough to the characters to be special enough they need you, but similar enough that it’s not out of this world.
Don’t give yourself all the power. These are major Mary Sue points. You don’t want to be the most powerful person there, nor do you want to be the weakest. If everyone has to save you, all of the time, it gets annoying. Make sure you balance everything, and have weakness that make sense. Make people feel at home with you, don’t try to best them, or show them how it’s done. (Granted, if your character thinks that, and can’t, and you’re kind of laughing at the idiot for being such an egotistical jerk, then by all means have fun.)
Background History
HAVE ONE. This we cannot stress enough. The second we see a roleplayer, or a writer, with a character that has zero history or has amnesia who can’t remember anything, we know we are dealing with a potential Mary Sue. This is a huge tip off. It looks like a great idea in theory because it lets you RP it out and get used to it, but it just says you have no idea what you’re doing. You don’t know enough about them to really give us anything to work with, and an empty history means we as WRITERS have no idea where RP with you might take us, so RP will come out messy and hurried.
Backgrounds should avoid the following without good reasoning:
• No Family; If your entire family was killed, and your only OOC reason is to avoid Family Member RPs, or to make sure they have no ties to harken back to, or to make them someone you can pity, then you messed up.
• Orphans, raised in the wild are all similar stories to be avoided.
• Having no known source of money, but plenty of spending cash. That shows you aren’t thinking things through, and you aren’t willing to make do with what you have or get creative
• Rich, but someone who gave it up because of reasons. Unless you can do this really really well and make it something amazing that feeds into the plot, and your character’s growth as a person, it’s not going to make your character more of a rebel. It’ll just make them stereotypical.
Backstorys are made FOR a reason. If there’s plot points you want to bring up and explore as a character then by all means have them. Research them well, understand what you’re getting into. That’s why we have backstories, so we can show the effects lives have had on our characters. It helps enrich a character, give them reasons for acting the way they do, and opens doors to new roleplays. If you have a character who was mugged, your character can use that as a reason for many things; self-defense lessons, fear of shadowy figures, paranoia, dislike of being snuck up on, hiding of money in socks, keeping weapons on hand, being a wuss in the face of bad guys, giving up too easily. It all depends on how they were effected, and if it give them something to work through, or a goal, or something that adds to the plot THAT is what backstory is for.
Perfection
If your character is perfect, you aren’t here to roleplay. You’re here to show-off and make a mockery of the entire world of Gor. You are generally not going to be welcome because of it. A character who is perfect has no ability to grow. They have no ability to really make things happen, because you have nothing to play on your plot-points with or give interesting reactions with. You’ll have no goals to reach, no life to live.
On top of all this, you’re going to make people uncomfortable with you. If they can’t ever hope to match up with you; why should they even bother? You’ll come off as a plastic Barbie/Ken Doll to be ignored entirely. So instead try adding some flaws. If “too beautiful” is on your list, either it must literally be too beautiful (actually causing people to die regularly with it works) or you’re doing it wrong. Personality flaws need to be something intact and that will be triggered often. If your character can’t deal with frogs in a swamp? You have something you can play for laughs, and plot points.
Likes and dislikes can help, cravings for certain foods that are really weird and get people’s attention. You need flaws, and that somewhat hidden scar that doesn’t stop you from being pretty doesn’t count. Eccentricity can work, but if you suggest your character is “nice most of the time, but likes sharp things and will flip out on people randomly!” you’re a character model that is overdone, old hat, and generally not wanted in a roleplay. Those characters have a very bad reputation of being played very badly, so unless you can explain yourself, Don’t do it.
You need to avoid perfection, avoid reaching your goals, and avoid being a perfect personality. If a character has flaws ALWAYS remember them, and use them realistically. No, having a character who went through traumatic abuse as a child will not always make them crave sex, nor will it always make them intensely shy. Read up on their flaws, show quirks thanks to them in every day settings. Make it a part of your character, not just something shoved in a background story closet you bring out only for attention.
Relations
THIS AGAIN. NO RELATIONSHIPS WITHOUT PERMISSION. If you decide you’re related to any of the main cast, be they villains, heroes or side characters, you did something wrong. Relationships are tenuous at best, and if a roleplayer is PLAYING the character, unless you’ve agreed on it beforehand it’s going to make them angry.
Imagine if you made a oh, let’s use a stereotype here, a special last Princess of The Oasis of the Twisted Palm. character. Then someone made a character without asking you and claimed to be her sister, and they they had someone else be an uncle, and a mother, and stuff; your character isn’t looking so cool anymore is she? So when a character is an only child, there’s a reason for it. It makes them unique. It makes them who they are. A kid who grows up with no siblings has a much different approach than one with more.
If you’re a “lost” sibling/cousin/other then it’s even worse. You’re accusing their parents of being bad people in some cases, in others you’re just basically flaunting a canon. It’s a way of making yourself WAY too special, bringing attention to you and your character. You don’t want that, you want to fade into play in a way that makes it seem like you were there all along. Don’t call attention to yourself unless it’s a plot point that NEARLY EVERYONE agrees on.
Playing Nice with the Story and World
This is basically the number one thing you should pay attention to. As a character in this world, you have basically signed up to exist by that world’s rules. If it hasn’t been mentioned in the books of John Norman as possible, and there’s no logical way to cause it, you shouldn’t have it. Magic on Gor? No. don’t do it. Look to the rules of the universe and OBEY them.
Gor doesn’t have dragons and it clashes with the theme. If you used them in any way you’re going to have serious problems with having people reading your posts or story and being able to connect with it. The reason things can get away with existing in play is because they all follow a logical set of rules in THAT universe that might not particularly mesh well with our own. We believe it because it’s the same laws throughout the universe, But the world and societies are different from ours.
So follow the rules of the universe as best you can. If there’s a rule about there only being certain colors in use for something, don’t go off and use checkerboard or rainbow or pink just because you likes it a ton. Liking something does not mean it’s going to be good for the story, nor does it mean that it’s going to be enjoyed by anyone else. Don’t bring in species that don’t exist, don’t reach for machinery that doesn’t exist.
If you want to do a special loophole that the books have set up, make sure you know everything about the subject. Know it inside and out, learn all about it, be able to describe it in such a way that other people can believe it and for the record “Because I can do whatever I want it’s MY character!” doesn’t fly in many circles. You’re trying to get people to like you, not ban you...
Additional Information
Here’s a list of Tip-offs you might see in a Mary Sue homepage. Be careful, some can be used right, use common sense..
• No background/history.
• Dead parents for no reason.
• “Weakness: Figure it out!”
• Having more weapons than fingers.
• Anything similar to “They’re usually really sweet, but sometimes they go insane.”
• Being liked by everyone.
• Relationships with other characters, pre-RP, with no backstory/reasoning
• IRL ^_^ Happy faces in RP.
• If they wander onto the scene in the first post, seemingly without reading any other post, wounded/crying.
• If they cause drama over things done IC, OOCly. Especially if they take offense as if you insulted them personally, if you correct only their character.
• They drop unrelated links or videos in rooms in rooms that interrupt the flow of roleplay
Got something on the list above? Well if you can roleplay it well, it’s possible. This stuff is not failsafe, even if a lot of it crosses over with simply bad roleplayers. For instance, roleplaying a connection with an established canon character can be done safely. By actually talking it out with the character is a GREAT step.
If you manage to make the person playing the canon, or anyone else in the room, really uncomfortable from this point on you blew it. The trick is to read people, know what their reactions are and how to play with them correctly. Also, there’s this thing called tact. What is this magical word called tact? It’s when you don’t shove it in people’s faces. Be gentle and ease them into the concept.
If anyone starts pushing you away, shutting you down, getting around, showing any annoyed gestures, shortening their posts rapidly, or anything else that screams “I don’t like you, and I don’t want to RP with you,” you might be able to salvage it by quickly changing the subject to something they like, or back to the original topic. Let the world see you briefly, and then encounter you several more times. Don’t just dump yourself on them like a bucket of ice water. This advice will only work for roleplayers who are intelligent/empathic/very lucky/very good at what they do.
If you feel like a Mary Sue, remember; it’s okay. If people haven’t complained, if people roleplay with you without you badgering them, and if you’ve done well for yourself you’re fine. Don’t let this hurt your self esteem as a roleplayer, just grow so you don’t have to use some of these crutches if it really bugs you.
Where Do I Go From Here?
Simply chose a link below that best suits your next step you want to take.
That’s about as simple as we can make it. However this in and of itself covers many different facets.
There are many different things that feed into the creation of a Mary Sue, allowing them to rise like a swamp monster from the sewers, and we will cover some of the major ones you see show up, and how to avoid them! The more of these you see in your roleplaying, the worse a Mary Sue you are playing. A lot of these things might cross over with simply bad roleplaying, some of them are okay in certain situations. Talk with someone you respect, and see if they are made uncomfortable by your character if you have any worries. If several people pipe up, check yourself before you wreck yourself. Either your roleplaying style doesn’t mesh with that group, or you have a personal problem.
Remember: As always, these can be okay with enough backstory, history, and reasoning. However, here are why they can be problems.
Popularity
So first things first, how awesome is your character? Like, the most awesome? So cool everyone wants to be their friend, or so badass that friends are thrown to the side never to be seen again? There’s a problem with going to the extreme on both of these.
If your character has not interacted with others, and yet your homepage says “everyone loves them!” then you have an issue right off the bat. Any character who is liked by every single person is either a 2D character without any flaws or good things about them or lying. If bad people are just “jealous” you may want to check yourself.
For one thing, if your character is perfect, how are you going to get any character growth for a roleplay started? It comes off shallow, and badly thought out. For another, you cannot tell people what to think of your character without ever interacting. You can’t ever tell another person how they are supposed to feel in any case, this is what we like to call “free will” in the biz
If you state even the bad guys love your character, you’re in deep shit. Now you’re messing with canon personalities, and people who play those characters won’t like it. You’ll be in hostile territory immediately if you assume anything, let alone a relationship with another roleplayer. People will hate you to spite you. You’ve made a character without giving them any conflict, who can deal with everyone. That means you have no room for sub-plots, no room for growth.
If the characters YOU personally dislike are the ones who hate your character, even if it doesn’t match up with their personality in play? Even worse. This shows you cannot keep yourself out of your writing enough to keep the characters separate, or that you have a vendetta towards making them look bad for some reason. You need to have believable relationships with give, take, and the occasional fight. Even if that fighting is just a friendly rivalry.
If your character is absolutely hated by everyone you may be falling into the Anti-Sue, which is still a Sue. You’ve probably heard of Sues if you’ve gone to this extreme, but it’s just as bad. If no one likes your character in character, how are you going to get any play? No one will want to roleplay with you, and your character will mope around on the sidelines like a worthless lump. No one will trust them, any roleplay in a closed room would never open their doors to you, and you’re going to be shut out.
It’s one thing to be a lone wolf character, a character that kind of grates on people, but to openly make a character so despised that no one can interact with them on any level? Bad idea broski. You’ve made a stagnant character who cannot interact except badly, and will not gain character growth. Plus, as mentioned above, you shouldn’t tell people what THEY think of your character. You should let people have their own decisions.
If you’re writing and the major plot-arc is how everyone hates you except that special flower you fall in love with and marry, A.) no one wants to read it. B.) It’s actually a show of low self-esteem and is kind of worrying. C.) You’re coming off desperate. It’s not a good place to be all told, and you may want to branch out and consider making friends.
Attention
Do you need attention on your character 24/7? Do you make a big show of being injured, or bored, or throwing a hissy fit to get people to pay attention to you? If any of this sounds like you, or if you’re sighing loudly in a corner and trying to make people ask you what is wrong, you are an Attention-Monger, and likely heading towards being a Mary Sue. Instead, you should get involved in an interesting creative way, as a support character.
If someone else’s big scene is going on and you take it away from them, to put it simply, you are a total jerk. That’s just not something you should do. Instead, let them have their time in the sun. Ask questions that let their character shine. When dealing with problems, let them solve the solutions before you step all over them. In the same vein, if someone is always the one you’re catering too, take some time to shine yourself! It’s okay to have time where you’re driving the story.
If you’re writing a story and it follows your character along, it’s one thing. But if you show up for every single major event that the other characters have survived for no reason, you may have a problem. Let them have their adventures, don’t have to be there for every major plot point. Read about in a newspaper, hear about it from a friend, badger them on their free-time we never see in play! It’s okay to be a part of their lives and story if you’re going to throw your character in the mess anyways ,but don’t try to ruin what makes them who they are. If there’s a problem they can solve themselves, don’t solve it for them. Don’t always be the kidnap victim. Don’t take down the monsters that could have made them great, unless it’s a plot point made specifically for your character.
Martyr yourself at your own risk. If everyone is crying over your corpse mid-battle while in danger; you’re doing it wrong. If they mention you in passing afterwards, or if a character with a believable relationship to yours cries about it, all the better. Don’t make the world begin and end with you. But if he likes you enough, and the the readers can believe it, go ahead and make your death his berserk button and let him save the day!
Powers
Limit yourself on the powers. Have a light touch. A strength here or there, different enough to the characters to be special enough they need you, but similar enough that it’s not out of this world.
Don’t give yourself all the power. These are major Mary Sue points. You don’t want to be the most powerful person there, nor do you want to be the weakest. If everyone has to save you, all of the time, it gets annoying. Make sure you balance everything, and have weakness that make sense. Make people feel at home with you, don’t try to best them, or show them how it’s done. (Granted, if your character thinks that, and can’t, and you’re kind of laughing at the idiot for being such an egotistical jerk, then by all means have fun.)
Background History
HAVE ONE. This we cannot stress enough. The second we see a roleplayer, or a writer, with a character that has zero history or has amnesia who can’t remember anything, we know we are dealing with a potential Mary Sue. This is a huge tip off. It looks like a great idea in theory because it lets you RP it out and get used to it, but it just says you have no idea what you’re doing. You don’t know enough about them to really give us anything to work with, and an empty history means we as WRITERS have no idea where RP with you might take us, so RP will come out messy and hurried.
Backgrounds should avoid the following without good reasoning:
• No Family; If your entire family was killed, and your only OOC reason is to avoid Family Member RPs, or to make sure they have no ties to harken back to, or to make them someone you can pity, then you messed up.
• Orphans, raised in the wild are all similar stories to be avoided.
• Having no known source of money, but plenty of spending cash. That shows you aren’t thinking things through, and you aren’t willing to make do with what you have or get creative
• Rich, but someone who gave it up because of reasons. Unless you can do this really really well and make it something amazing that feeds into the plot, and your character’s growth as a person, it’s not going to make your character more of a rebel. It’ll just make them stereotypical.
Backstorys are made FOR a reason. If there’s plot points you want to bring up and explore as a character then by all means have them. Research them well, understand what you’re getting into. That’s why we have backstories, so we can show the effects lives have had on our characters. It helps enrich a character, give them reasons for acting the way they do, and opens doors to new roleplays. If you have a character who was mugged, your character can use that as a reason for many things; self-defense lessons, fear of shadowy figures, paranoia, dislike of being snuck up on, hiding of money in socks, keeping weapons on hand, being a wuss in the face of bad guys, giving up too easily. It all depends on how they were effected, and if it give them something to work through, or a goal, or something that adds to the plot THAT is what backstory is for.
Perfection
If your character is perfect, you aren’t here to roleplay. You’re here to show-off and make a mockery of the entire world of Gor. You are generally not going to be welcome because of it. A character who is perfect has no ability to grow. They have no ability to really make things happen, because you have nothing to play on your plot-points with or give interesting reactions with. You’ll have no goals to reach, no life to live.
On top of all this, you’re going to make people uncomfortable with you. If they can’t ever hope to match up with you; why should they even bother? You’ll come off as a plastic Barbie/Ken Doll to be ignored entirely. So instead try adding some flaws. If “too beautiful” is on your list, either it must literally be too beautiful (actually causing people to die regularly with it works) or you’re doing it wrong. Personality flaws need to be something intact and that will be triggered often. If your character can’t deal with frogs in a swamp? You have something you can play for laughs, and plot points.
Likes and dislikes can help, cravings for certain foods that are really weird and get people’s attention. You need flaws, and that somewhat hidden scar that doesn’t stop you from being pretty doesn’t count. Eccentricity can work, but if you suggest your character is “nice most of the time, but likes sharp things and will flip out on people randomly!” you’re a character model that is overdone, old hat, and generally not wanted in a roleplay. Those characters have a very bad reputation of being played very badly, so unless you can explain yourself, Don’t do it.
You need to avoid perfection, avoid reaching your goals, and avoid being a perfect personality. If a character has flaws ALWAYS remember them, and use them realistically. No, having a character who went through traumatic abuse as a child will not always make them crave sex, nor will it always make them intensely shy. Read up on their flaws, show quirks thanks to them in every day settings. Make it a part of your character, not just something shoved in a background story closet you bring out only for attention.
Relations
THIS AGAIN. NO RELATIONSHIPS WITHOUT PERMISSION. If you decide you’re related to any of the main cast, be they villains, heroes or side characters, you did something wrong. Relationships are tenuous at best, and if a roleplayer is PLAYING the character, unless you’ve agreed on it beforehand it’s going to make them angry.
Imagine if you made a oh, let’s use a stereotype here, a special last Princess of The Oasis of the Twisted Palm. character. Then someone made a character without asking you and claimed to be her sister, and they they had someone else be an uncle, and a mother, and stuff; your character isn’t looking so cool anymore is she? So when a character is an only child, there’s a reason for it. It makes them unique. It makes them who they are. A kid who grows up with no siblings has a much different approach than one with more.
If you’re a “lost” sibling/cousin/other then it’s even worse. You’re accusing their parents of being bad people in some cases, in others you’re just basically flaunting a canon. It’s a way of making yourself WAY too special, bringing attention to you and your character. You don’t want that, you want to fade into play in a way that makes it seem like you were there all along. Don’t call attention to yourself unless it’s a plot point that NEARLY EVERYONE agrees on.
Playing Nice with the Story and World
This is basically the number one thing you should pay attention to. As a character in this world, you have basically signed up to exist by that world’s rules. If it hasn’t been mentioned in the books of John Norman as possible, and there’s no logical way to cause it, you shouldn’t have it. Magic on Gor? No. don’t do it. Look to the rules of the universe and OBEY them.
Gor doesn’t have dragons and it clashes with the theme. If you used them in any way you’re going to have serious problems with having people reading your posts or story and being able to connect with it. The reason things can get away with existing in play is because they all follow a logical set of rules in THAT universe that might not particularly mesh well with our own. We believe it because it’s the same laws throughout the universe, But the world and societies are different from ours.
So follow the rules of the universe as best you can. If there’s a rule about there only being certain colors in use for something, don’t go off and use checkerboard or rainbow or pink just because you likes it a ton. Liking something does not mean it’s going to be good for the story, nor does it mean that it’s going to be enjoyed by anyone else. Don’t bring in species that don’t exist, don’t reach for machinery that doesn’t exist.
If you want to do a special loophole that the books have set up, make sure you know everything about the subject. Know it inside and out, learn all about it, be able to describe it in such a way that other people can believe it and for the record “Because I can do whatever I want it’s MY character!” doesn’t fly in many circles. You’re trying to get people to like you, not ban you...
Additional Information
Here’s a list of Tip-offs you might see in a Mary Sue homepage. Be careful, some can be used right, use common sense..
• No background/history.
• Dead parents for no reason.
• “Weakness: Figure it out!”
• Having more weapons than fingers.
• Anything similar to “They’re usually really sweet, but sometimes they go insane.”
• Being liked by everyone.
• Relationships with other characters, pre-RP, with no backstory/reasoning
• IRL ^_^ Happy faces in RP.
• If they wander onto the scene in the first post, seemingly without reading any other post, wounded/crying.
• If they cause drama over things done IC, OOCly. Especially if they take offense as if you insulted them personally, if you correct only their character.
• They drop unrelated links or videos in rooms in rooms that interrupt the flow of roleplay
Got something on the list above? Well if you can roleplay it well, it’s possible. This stuff is not failsafe, even if a lot of it crosses over with simply bad roleplayers. For instance, roleplaying a connection with an established canon character can be done safely. By actually talking it out with the character is a GREAT step.
If you manage to make the person playing the canon, or anyone else in the room, really uncomfortable from this point on you blew it. The trick is to read people, know what their reactions are and how to play with them correctly. Also, there’s this thing called tact. What is this magical word called tact? It’s when you don’t shove it in people’s faces. Be gentle and ease them into the concept.
If anyone starts pushing you away, shutting you down, getting around, showing any annoyed gestures, shortening their posts rapidly, or anything else that screams “I don’t like you, and I don’t want to RP with you,” you might be able to salvage it by quickly changing the subject to something they like, or back to the original topic. Let the world see you briefly, and then encounter you several more times. Don’t just dump yourself on them like a bucket of ice water. This advice will only work for roleplayers who are intelligent/empathic/very lucky/very good at what they do.
If you feel like a Mary Sue, remember; it’s okay. If people haven’t complained, if people roleplay with you without you badgering them, and if you’ve done well for yourself you’re fine. Don’t let this hurt your self esteem as a roleplayer, just grow so you don’t have to use some of these crutches if it really bugs you.
Where Do I Go From Here?
Simply chose a link below that best suits your next step you want to take.
