As you read the Introduction, you might have been thinking to yourself, �what the hell are they talking about? What�s a despie, anyway? And what�s a Mary Sue?� That question really depends on the circumstances you�re looking at. We shall explain further.
�Despies� and �Mary Sues� are the same thing for the most part. However, the term �despie� is used more on role-play boards. The term �Mary Sue� is popular there, too, but there is a small difference. You can classify a story character as a �Mary Sue.�
�Despies� are role-players that have little-to-no brain cells. They make unrealistically perfect characters with beautiful bodies, a great deal of intelligence, and tragic pasts (usually). Not only are despies usually stupid (with the occasional exception- some aren�t imbeciles, they just don�t realize what they�re doing), but they�re also very, very annoying to us good RPers and writers.
Their motive? To attract a mate for their character.
This does not mean that they want to date over the internet. They just want romance for their characters with no strings attached. They often don�t want one permanent mate, but prefer to have a new one in each RP they participate in.
Often, in Real Life, Despies are lustful and single youngsters that don�t want to look at porn over the internet, but still crave romance of some sort. Sometimes, they also make characters to try and pretend to be someone they aren�t- someone perfect. Mary Sues are very similar to despies. They are dim witted characters (though they claim to be smart) that are tragically beautiful.
You know that you are reading about a Mary Sue if you are tempted to throw up while reading a fictional story or a particularly bad fanfiction (usually with a made up character.) As mentioned before, in role-playing circles, Mary Sues and Despies are the same thing. However, horrible, unflawed characters in stories are only �Mary Sues�.
If you pay attention to the way a Despie roleplays, you might see certain character traits that aren't exactly human... For example, some despies' characters have two different eye colors. Not a different color in each eye, mind you - two different colors in both their eyes. One of the most common eye-coloring goofs is a character that has both brown and hazel eyes at the same time, and as we all know, that is impossible.
Also, most despies (not the ones that can be saved... the terrible, brain-leeching ones) cannot spell. Their own character names will be misspelled, along with at least half of the words they type in each post. To learn more about Despies and spelling, see Chapter IV.
