Response to: "MXTX tends to write almost Gary Stu characters, Xie Lian (worst)"
I don't remember where I saw this said, but at the time, I replied and saved it--but I'd only finished book 2. I came across my saved reply later and wanted to share and expand on it.
Xie Lian is, to me, the quintessential Everyman, relatable to almost everyone. This is the opposite of a Gary Stu/Mary Sue, which is not just about being OP in terms of physical abilities, but is also and mainly about their not needing to grow as a person, which makes them unrelatable.
Yes, Xie Lian is martially OP, but before the fall of his kingdom he was naive, rejected sound advice (though not all of it was sound), and thought he could do anything no matter what--a very typical attitude for someone his age with his abilities and achievements. His biggest positive trait was his caring for others, but he was not able to achieve his core goal of saving the common people, as a "Gary Stu" would have. In fact he got close to destroying them after extremely severe suffering at their hands. While not as extreme in scope, this is what so many of us experience in life: lofty goals that we are not able to achieve, and debilitating suffering and setbacks, on our journey.
He was greatly humbled and grew from these experiences, which is what well fleshed-out characters have to do, whereas Mary Sues/Gary Sues have no or very little character growth. But even the way his character was shaped by the fall of Xianle and its aftermath had some flaws; he went too far in the other direction. He lost almost all confidence in himself, and purposely severely punished himself for his failings and near-failings, for centuries. He lost any regard for his own well-being and became blasé about his own pain. And the present timeline charts his growth away from these unhealthy traits. There is no part of the book which doesn't involve his character change and growth. So in my view, he is about as far from a Gary Stu as it gets.
The thing is that by the time we meet Xie Lian at the beginning of the book he’s already gone through a big part of his character development, so at first he can seem like a remarkably well rounded character. We don’t actually see that development until we see the flashbacks and the contrast between XL in the present day and him when he was 17. I can kinda see how that might lead someone to thinking he’s a Gary Stu but also… not really?
A Gary Stu is typically a character without flaws, but Xie Lian is literally introduced in the prologue as The Laughing Stock of The Thee Realms. None of the other gods like him, hes a social outcast, he has terrible luck, he’s the god of scrap collecting.
Even his good traits don’t make him perfect. He’s nice and very polite but he’s straight up mean in his head and even to peoples faces sometimes (which I actually think makes him even kinder, because it’s not that he doesn’t have mean thoughts because EVERYONE does, it’s that he makes the choice to be nice anyway.) He’s not arrogant or overconfident like he was when we was younger but instead he has a pretty defeatist attitude and is extremely self deprecating.
And the same goes for the other MXTX protags.
