Possession Sue Thread

A curious little trope.

I read a variety of Naruto and RWBY fanfics, and one thing I noticed was that: a lot of these fics involve The Woobie character becoming a Bad Ass, or otherwise vastly transformed.

In the case of RWBY and Naruto, these characters would be Jaune Arc and Naruto Uzumaki respectively. Fan fiction often takes these two and makes them far, far cooler, snarkier, and/or more intelligent than they were in canon.

So what I want to ask is: what other Possession Sue's have you noticed?

edited 6th Feb '15 4:55:43 PM by FOFD

Ranma. Oh Heavens. Ranma gets this so much.

Harry Potter. Especially in those terrible "Independent Harry" stories.

Shinji Ikari.

Really, <insert underdog main character here> probably universally fits the bill.

Every so often I'll run across a yu-gi-oh fic like this because that's all i fucking read please send help. Usually they make Yugi some kind of calculating, expert puppetmaster without the need for his weird pharaoh ghost-friend, instead of a kid with a good heart who likes a card game. I blame tournament players. Somehow.

It's funny because the whole premise of the first series is based on Yugi literally being possessed by someone more competent.

edited 7th Feb '15 8:13:02 AM by ShengDongJiXi

Irony at it's finest...

This trope is the main reason I don't read Naruto fanfiction... because some of us actually did like the way canon character development happened...

I don't mind the Woobie character getting badass if the situation that the Woobie is in isn't giving him/her other options other then 'get badass' or 'get dead'.

Does Wimpification count?

It's not so much that The Woobie gets badass that's the problem... in fact, it usually isn't The Woobie that a Possesssion Sue is happening to (although it can be). Possession Sue is whenever a fanfic author will give a character an overhaul so that that character fits better into what the fanfic author thinks is badass, without taking into account how the character is portrayed in canon. Often times, these fanfics come off as a Take That! against how the author developed the character. Possession Sue crops up often in fanfics of works where Jumping the Shark, They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot, They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character, etc. are the reactions of a large portion of the fandom. In other words, it tends to happen when the creator didn't live up to the expectations of the audience.

From what I've seen, this happens more with works who feature Idiot Hero Good Is Dumb, Stupid Good, Black-and-White Morality, etc. It tends not to happen with works that have Guile Hero, Pragmatic Hero, Good Is Not Dumb, Grey-and-Gray Morality, etc. If anything, the majority of Possession Sue fanfics turn the former into the latter.

But really, the most annoying thing about Possession Sue fics is how they ignore character's canon reasons for doing things...

edited 7th Feb '15 7:21:21 PM by ObsidianFire

Pokémon had a fanbase that was in love with these years ago. The anime version of Misty, for some odd reason, had this weird tendency to always show up as an irresistible super-goddess with rare dragons. I haven't been around there in a long time, though - has it stopped?

I actually thought about taking apart the cliche's in Naruto fanfiction.

Oh man. If I took a drink for every time a love interest, who was NOT demonized got turned into this, I'd be dead by the end of the week!

Possession Sue... Pretty much every character who is not the most conventionally badass person in the setting will be hit by this at some point. Hell, I've even seen it with goddamn Goku.

People become so enamored with the characters and identify so closely with them that they forget what made those characters likable, endearing and identifiable to begin with, and wind up creating monsters of no virtue.

But who am I to judge? It's not like I don't enjoy a good AU that winds up drastically altering personalities as a result, myself...