Exchange of Realities

I see a lot of people discussing character power level and why it should be limited For the Sake of the Story, particularly for secondary characters. Nary a month goes by on the Giant in the Playground forums without someone getting into an argument over what constitutes a DMPC and why the party shouldn’t be accompanied by someone higher level than they are. Writers worried about whether their characters carry the mark of the Dreaded Mary Sue focus on whether the character is powerful, whether this flaw to the power or that choice not to use it or what have you will remove that terrible designation from their characters. This situation—amount of power, breadth of power, depth of power, presence of power, level of tech compared to surroundings—is an element that the speculative fiction writer and the gamer do have to keep an eye on that many of our counterparts in standard genres don’t need to think about.

I’m not going to claim that power isn’t a consideration at all. People shouldn’t be given Phenomenal Cosmic Power and no limits, nor all sorts of cool stuff nobody else has because they’re the main characters. That’s just bad writing. I am, however, going to say that as an indicator of the whether a character fits in her role in the story, and as a benchmark for determining Sueness or anti-Sueness, power is vastly overrated. Particularly in worlds that are not supposed to revolve around the main character(s). I’ve seen characters with power enough and limits few enough that they’d indicate Suedom on a litmus test when looked at on their own, whom I would consider balanced and well-written characters; conversely, I’ve seen humans without a single power to their names whom I would consider the vilest of Mary Sues, and whom I would chase back to the inky depths from whence they came with handbooks on good writing.

If it’s not the power, then, what is it?

For main characters, it’s how obviously the world bends around them. If a character who wasn’t even literate two weeks ago is detecting linguistic subtleties in the written form of his (also recent) second language, particularly ones that have never been noticed before, there might be a problem. If someone’s got a serious case of Only One Who Can Save the World, full stop, there’s a decent chance there’ll be issues. If another one is for some reason hit on or expressed an interest in by every named character of the opposite gender and a decent smattering of his own, particularly if this isn’t the result of some kind of pheremone-based magic, you’re on thin ice.

For side characters, it’s the narrative weight. This goes double for side characters in games; different people favor different personality types, so just about everyone reading a book will want more of one character and less of another, and five people in the same room won’t completely match on whose exposure to change which way. But when the main characters aren’t the writer, having things like agency, screen time, or chances to be the best at something taken away by a secondary character is annoying. It’s character image and relative focus time you should be focusing on, not necessarily power level. Portrayed right, even someone who is “The Only X” or “The Destined Y”, even someone who has been around longer than most of the characters combined and has the skills to match—even those can be well-liked. They just have to know how to avoid landing on the wrong feet. (More on this tomorrow!)

For everyone, it’s about flaws and fallibility. Nobody likes a perfect character. Nor one whose few mistakes are excused by the narrative; Limyaael (along with differentiating between the Sue and the Author’s Darling, an interesting technicality in its own right), defines the Canon Sue as one of “Those characters whose perceptions are perfectly in accord with objective reality, who are always right, who don’t make mistakes”. A few notes on flaws, though. One, low self-confidence is a dangerous “flaw” to have, particularly when it regards one’s own advantages; much has been written about characters who just wouldn’t believe they were capable/attractive/worthy/insert complimentary adjective here, despite their truly possessing that quality and everyone around them knowing it and telling them so or talking about them that way when they don’t think the character can hear—and how annoying these characters really are. (Point 2, here, is an example. Note that, as the linked post points out, being epically tragic is not a good “flaw” either—unless by flaw you mean something that makes the character unlikeable.) Two, flaws that don’t actually come into play, and don’t in of themselves affect the story (or only affect the story when it would be convenient) don’t count. Three, flaws should be shown and not necessarily told (see two).

So remember: level of power alone isn’t going to determine whether or not a character’s worth the ink she’s written with. There are plenty of other factors to take into account.

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