Critique: New survivor Orela Rose is Mary Sue

[Hitman]

I have not seen anyone mentioning this and all content creators unanimously praise her through the roof so I would like to at least mention this and list my points. I get it, if you are creator, this is easiest way to get backlash and drama that you don't want. I understand that this is probably highly sensitive topic to give critic against marginalized characters but I assure you that she could be any gender and the points would be the same.

I am part of LGBT+ and I enjoy seeing representation but I would not want over-presentation and when given presentation, the people should still be people and that's how in my opinion we normalize things best in society and not trying to make the characters better or stand on pedestal. Sure you can make them unique but don't make them Mary Sue.

Now to the actual points after I read the lore why I think she is Mary Sue:

- Orela's parents support her without any conflicts
- Orela seems to be great at throwing haunted houses together, "leading groups of laughing and screaming college students" indicating that she was good at guidance and social skills
- Friend Emily dies in her presence and she gets no legal push-back from law, grief or anything? Like even here you could've at least written that there was emotional toll from taking such a career choice for her reasons that were emotional.
- Drops out from school, parents support her on this decision and with all she went through she's driving ambulance and saving lifes in a year (She basically seems to become overnight not just good but exceptional in everything along the entire story.)
- A billionaire is so grateful he basically gives her a building and money to her dream—no strings attached.
- Opens up restaurant/theme house later with help of friends and has no issue making that happen and still does EMT job 5 days a week and her hobby restaurant once a month. This place also becomes instant success overnight - friends recommending to have it open more often but Orela chooses not to
- "Orela didn't panic. She never panicked." hits me so wrong. She's so perfect that you had to mention separately that she never panics?
- "Instantly, Orela shook off her superstitions and became all business as she urgently searched the dark abyss for the wounded and dying before it was too late." is also something I would want to inspect. She had no fear? She just became seasoned protagonist right away?

What are Orela's flaws? Pushbacks? Struggles? Rivalries? Even the transition Orela went through seems to be written that her friend Emily helped her but no real struggle. Are we supposed to just assume these things always carry struggle? Which ones were the struggles for Orela? She seems to be emotionally invincible, just calm determination through feelings.

Why did Entity even take Orela? She seems to be blessed with luck, being instantly skilled in everything and emotionally perfect. When entity takes her, she seems to have things good. Imagine character who had problems from her friend dying and just when she was about to finish studies of becoming EMT and finding solutions to open up that restaurant/haunted house to honor her friend, Entity takes her.

I almost feel like since she is so perfect that if we would continue writing her story, she is the one to beat entity because she had everything so good outside of Entity's realm that now it was time to enter and beat the Entity.

Extra: She is not released with Killer. There is usually a connection between survivor and killer in same chapter but Orela can't have any sort of connection to killer, obviously.

Tome can fix this and I hope it does. I certainly hope it's not another success story of Orela. I am just utterly disappointed to the lore of the new survivor and that this was not seen by anyone in writing room or outside of the room that she is strong Mary Sue. Or even worse, story was seen as Mary Sue and nobody cared or even writers were encouraged for Mary Sue story.

[Rabbit]

I just read through it. Your complaints are that she has two skills, got lucky once (in a way more mundane than many of the other existing characters), and that they didn't want to write the only story some people think you're allowed to let a trans character have. A lot of what you say just doesn't line up with the actual material.

[Shella]

This would be a perfect example to say, not everything in life can be taken at face value.

Just because she has no struggles in her lore, doesn't mean she wasn't stricken by grief when her friend died. Just like in real life, we hide our true emotions from other people. Some people are so good at hiding their true self that when they do something absolutely unspeakable, their family and friends are in shock. "I never thought they could do something like that...."

It doesn't matter how close you are with someone, you can never ever truly know them.

[Hitman]

Originally posted by Angels Among Us ♡:

Really? I already knew that Dead by Daylight players complain about EVERYTHING, but this just takes it to a WHOLE NEW LEVEL! The LORE? Really? Ever thought maybe you just have too much time on your hands? SMH... :laughing_yeti:

Zero words to the actual post? You care what people care that much? Usually if people don't care about certain topic in forums or anywhere, they scroll/walk past.

[MillenialgamergirlLP99/ttv]

99.9% dont care about lore but okay

[Hitman]

Originally posted by Rabbit:

I just read through it. Your complaints are that she has two skills, got lucky once (in a way more mundane than many of the other existing characters), and that they didn't want to write the only story some people think you're allowed to let a trans character have. A lot of what you say just doesn't line up with the actual material.

Could you give some examples of which of my things don't line up with the material? Would gladly hear.

[Hitman]

Originally posted by Shella:

This would be a perfect example to say, not everything in life can be taken at face value.

Just because she has no struggles in her lore, doesn't mean she wasn't stricken by grief when her friend died. Just like in real life, we hide our true emotions from other people. Some people are so good at hiding their true self that when they do something absolutely unspeakable, their family and friends are in shock. "I never thought they could do something like that...."

It doesn't matter how close you are with someone, you can never ever truly know them.

Her character lore is written. We cannot see her face or anything else like we would in a movie or real life if we were witnessing such situation(s). We are relying on the written piece of lore and how it stands now is Mary Sue story unless you point out something I missed in the lore and not just something that makes sense to you.

[Twerkologist]

I thought Orela's story was pretty good. Is she depicted as having serious flaws like Yun-jin, Jonah, Feng Min, Nea, David King, etc.? No, but I don't think that makes her a "Mary Sue" either.

1. I think it's a good choice to make Orela's parents supportive of her transition. There are a lot of great stories about LGBT+ people overcoming bigotry from their families, but it's important for audiences to see a trans character be loved and accepted by their families as well. I don't think *every* story with a trans character should feature that character being shunned by their parents, or else there would be very little variety in the kinds of character arcs/storylines trans characters would have in fiction. Every single trans person is a unique individual who has had their own unique life experiences, so it's important that this is represented in fiction as well rather than every fictional trans character having near-identical plotlines of not being accepted by their parents.

2. As for her haunted house and social skills, I think it makes sense for her to be good at that. It's established that she was majoring in hospitality in college, so she was learning how to create fun experiences for guests, give good tours, supervise these kinds of events, etc.. She also learned a lot about the horror genre from her friend Emily, Sable's podcast, Cliff Barra's works, etc., so I think the story reasonably explains why she would have all the important qualifications for creating a fun haunted house and making sure people had a fun time there.

3. Emily's death was an accident and Emily herself also played a huge role in creating the haunted house, so I don't see why Orela would be held legally responsible. If Emily were just a random person going through the haunted house, maybe, but she was one of its creators along with Orela. Becoming an EMT doesn't take much of an emotional toll on her because it was a part of her healing process. The main emotional trauma that Orela had from Emily's death was that she was unable to save her, and being an EMT gave her the knowledge and experience she needed to save people, which helped address her trauma.

4. If my daughter dropped out of college the literal day after her friend died in front of her, I sure as hell wouldn't be scolding her for her decision. I'd support her because I'd be afraid of worsening her mental health if I didn't. One of Orela's parents is a nurse as well, so I think they'd support her wanting to go into a similar field.

5. She trained to become an EMT for a year. That's not "becoming exceptional overnight." You get better at things if you put in the effort and receive months of training from extremely qualified instructors.

6. Saving a billionaire of all people IS pretty convenient, I think that's a fair point. However, Orela still *earned* the money he gave her using her knowledge and experience as an EMT to save his life, so it feels like she worked for it rather than just having it fall into her lap.

7. I think it makes sense for Orela to have no issues opening her themed restaurant because she already had been given all that money from the rich dude. The sky was the limit for her because she had all the money she needed, and she had *earned* that money. Also, since Emily had died in a haunted house, I think it makes sense that Orela would have been meticulous and cautious enough to avoid any non-financial issues when making the restaurant as well. She wouldn't want a repeat of anything going wrong like it did when Emily died.

8. One weekend a month is pretty reasonable. If she had it fully operational 7 days a week, then sure, doing that AND the EMT job would be a lot, but only 2 extra days of (much easier) work wouldn't be that bad. She's also very passionate about the restaurant, so it wouldn't feel as much like "work" to her. Also, again, the story has established that Orela earned the relevant qualifications to make the restaurant successful. She has a deep knowledge of Barra's works (which the restaurant was themed around) and experience with hospitality.

10. If an EMT panics, they could kill a patient and lose their job. She's also had plenty of experience with stressful/scary situations at this point, so it makes sense that she wouldn't really panic much anymore.

11. Yes, she is "seasoned" because she's had experience diving into life-and-death situations without fear already. She *has* to be fearless because there are lives on the line and they are counting on her staying strong and calm in order for her to find them and save them.

So I personally disagree with her being a "Mary Sue," but still, thank you for sharing your opinion. Genuinely, it's nice to see people really look at and discuss the lore. :)

[The Panic Wolf]

Uh oh, someone is upsettie spaghetti a trans character is a good person with supportive parents, high intelligence, and deep care for those around her.

[stufff]

OMG a trans character with supportive parents!?!? That totally breaks suspension of disbelief in this universe where an immortal lich from D&D can meet and kill Ripley from Alien, Simon Belmont from Castlevania, Ash from Evil Dead, and Nick Cage from just being Nick Cage.

[Hitman]

@Twerkologist I do agree with you in a lot of the individual levels that indeed things don't have to be in certain way. Not everyone needs to struggle in same places, have similar issues etc. But I find the lack of any sort of overcoming, pushback and such very Mary Sue. Like what's her biggest pushback, rivalry or flaw? Her friend dying? Okey, how was that pushback to her personally in the lore we have without creating fan fic? Objectively she dropped school, went to become EMT next day as far as I know and completed it in a year. She shows no sadness and seems invincible in her emotions objectively according to the lore text. If she was sad, as I would myself think she was, they could've at least written about it just a simple line.

To your section 3 I would like to say that if you create business or hobby related activity with someone and build something up and your business partner dies, there is always routine questioning and such. Here could've also been another spot where someone could've blamed her anyway and create rivalry. Would this be best choice in terms of writing? Not really, you would need to establish bit more for it to make sense to the reader who would've done it and why but I am showing examples where she could've had rivalry or pushback from people but every turn she is written that she doesn't have any.

And your section 4, I would ask her to at least take some time off than make radical decisions based on drastic happenings. Taking time off is always better than straight up drop off. If after time off she would feel like she still wants to do it, she can do it.

Rest of the sections you can always argue that they make sense but Mary Sue is a character without weakness' or character flaws. Even if they make sense, she is still in my opinion missing weakness', flaws, rivalry, pushback. She succeeds everything she does exceptionally well, she is handed things she needs and she is liked by literally everyone involved in the lore. These, flawless and succeeds in everything she does, are key ingredients to have Mary Sue character. Going through terrible event doesn't exclude character automatically not being Mary Sue, it's about the character.

[Hitman]

Originally posted by stufff:

OMG a trans character with supportive parents!?!? That totally breaks suspension of disbelief in this universe where an immortal lich from D&D can meet and kill Ripley from Alien, Simon Belmont from Castlevania, Ash from Evil Dead, and Nick Cage from just being Nick Cage.

Is that a problem for you? Cause either you want to start new discussion or I think you are missing the point. I feel like you didn't even read the title properly or then you don't understand the meaning of Mary Sue.

[Super Cosmic Space Magnet]

I kinda like the idea of a character for whom life is perfect and everything works out ending up in a game where they're gonna get Mori'd, Hooked, Vomited on, and all sorts. It's kinda funny in a way.

"OH NO WHY ISN'T MY PERFECT LIFE STILL PERFECT EVEN HERE?!"

Also I agree that characterisation & lore are important for survivors. There's no difference at all between them in game, so their aesthetics/the stories in our heads are all there is.

[Hitman]

Originally posted by Super Cosmic Space Magnet:

I kinda like the idea of a character for whom life is perfect and everything works out ending up in a game where they're gonna get Mori'd, Hooked, Vomited on, and all sorts. It's kinda funny in a way.

"OH NO WHY ISN'T MY PERFECT LIFE STILL PERFECT EVEN HERE?!"

Also I agree that characterisation & lore are important for survivors. There's no difference at all between them in game, so their aesthetics/the stories in our heads are all there is.

It's a nice perspective!

[Super Cosmic Space Magnet]

"Orela didn't panic. She never panicked"

Also Orela while on a hook: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

[sleepiest dhampir]

Originally posted by The Panic Wolf:

Uh oh, someone is upsettie spaghetti a trans character is a good person with supportive parents, high intelligence, and deep care for those around her.