Some time back, I think it is nearly half a year or more now, some of the people I online aim games with a lot commented that I make mary sues. I’ve never thought about it much, there are a couple of characters I’ll admit are Sues. Snow for example, this is a character I made when I was 10-11, she’s a weretiger and a mercenary. She is cold as stone and not afraid of anything, at least she doesn’t let it show. This was a character I needed in my life at that time. At that time I was being bullied and felt weak and alone. Snow became someone I could seek a bit of comfort in, someone whose pride I could feel when it didn’t feel like I had any of my own. Snow isn’t really an rp character, I never really played her, because I knew from the moment I discovered what a Sue is she was one. But, Sue or not, Snow had a purpose she served and I have never quite forgotten her for that.

I think one of the reasons I play mainly guys is that I fear that if I play a female they are either a Sue or a completely helpless person. Even Val was leaning heavily towards the Sue side and she started as a d&d character who was nice and balanced.

However, the character my friends pointed out is not someone I consider a Gary Stu, I’ll willingly admit that he is an angst muffin like no other, but with these friends that is how we roll. This particular character, Silver, was a shadowrun elf. He was a charisma monster, good looking and smooth talking. Though he had a tendency to talk himself into shit. He was from a fairly high up family, but got bullied at school. To escape that and feel a sense of having a group he joined one of the local gangs. It did and this was where he learned to run the shadows. He dropped out of school when he at the age of sixteen ended up having to go into hiding for a few weeks after a job with a rival gang had gone south. This was where he met Night. Night was a good 8 or 9 years older than Silver, and mostly did wetjobs, in other words he was an assassin. During the weeks there the two of them started dating, though from Silver’s side it was nothing serious. Night however fell hard and fast for Silver, completely of his own doing. Then after another few years of gang life Silver met Deads. Deads belonged to one of the rival gangs, was a sharp shooter for them. Due to many drinks and so on the two of them ended up in bed together. This repeated a few times before they officially started dating. It was a  bad relationship, but at the same time they loved each other. At this time both Deads and Silver did drugs, mostly whatever they could get their hands on. After a few months, almost a year if I remember correctly, Dead’s old gang found ‘em and decided it was payback time for leaving the gang. After hours of torture they got out, thanks to one of Dead’s old friends, at this point Silver was the only one awake. He got them to a hospital and using all of the money he had got Deadeye and Verity (one of their friends) patched up, but the doctors told him they were likely to die and he thought the gang was still after him so he ran away.

Later, finding Silver gone crushed Deadeye and he sank into depression and much heavier drug abuse and started an relationship with Verity, the genetic experiment. Silver ended up shadowrunning in Santa Fe and got a new boyfriend there who he eventually married. But shadowrunning is dangerous biz and Flake, Silver’s husband, got shot. Heartbroken, but with the offer of a job, Silver ended up back in Seattle where he discovered that his ‘new’ teammates are in fact his old ones.  At this point Deadeye acts like Silver doesn’t exist and when he does calls him “stupid elf” and so on. Verity acts all guilty and Esther (who is Silver’s childhood friend) tries to get him and Deadeye back together. In the mean time Silver has gotten clean and actually made a fair bit of money so there is a bit of a class jump between them now.

A lot of stuff happens, mainly them dealing with each other. At some point both Night and Flake show back up to mess with Silver’s head. The reason for me detailing this to give a story of what happened, and yes I do admit that Silver was an angst muffin of epic proportions, but I did not do all of this on my own. I loved playing this setting because for me it was a lot about how Silver reacted to the things that happened to him and more often than not I did not have any control over these things besides what Silver would have.

Maybe he was a Gary Stu, I don’t know.