Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
"Every first novel is the author either as Jesus or as Faust."
Pretty much Exactly What It Says On The Tin: Mary Sue is hardly limited to always being a goody two-shoes. This brand of Mary Sue decided to take the dark and evil path, kicking a few dogs and probably cackling about it in the process. Whether it be stealing the Cosmic Keystones out of the grasp of the heroes, effortlessly bringing about the ironic utopia of the other villain, or just generally acting like a cad, they absolutely love to be evil.
But anyway, this character pretty much shows up as an author's wish fulfillment to just be evil. Alternatively, in fanfiction, it might show up because the author favors the villain and wants a vicarious relationship with them. It might be a consequence of Evil Is Cool, taken to the logical extreme. Or, perhaps, the author just has a distaste for some (or all) of the protagonists and created the character to facilitate a Hate Fic, Fix Fic, or Revenge Fic. Either way, the same author favoritism and plot bias are now working for the forces of evil.
As far as overlaps go, there are two major ones. Sympathetic Sue is an easy one where the intent is to show that the character just had a crappy enough life to be forced into villainy. With this overlap, they are more of a Villain Protagonist than an antagonist in most cases. Tends to show up most often in fanfiction. The other common overlap is the God Mode Sue, with a ridiculous power level, forcing the heroes to hold the Idiot Ball, and/or requiring Deus Ex Machina in order for the protagonists to stand a chance of defeating them. This is the type that generally shows up in canon. It can overlap with other types, such as Jerk Sue, as well, but it never overlaps with Purity Sue (although they might become one after the Heel Face Turn, once the plot forgets everything evil about them).
Probably the rarest type of Sue, as Villains are always given great powers and abilities to make their inevitable downfall more sweet. A true Villain Sue will probably never have one, however, and even if he does it may be via Only The Author Can Save Them Now rather than any non- Ass Pull method.
Compare Magnificent Bastard, which might sometimes cross this line but generally presents someone charismatic enough to make it not only forgivable, but practically expected. Also compare the Boring Invincible Villain.
- In the Harry Potter fandom, many Fan Fics star a new character (or Hermione Granger) as Voldemort's daughter, who falls in love with Draco and plots Harry's downfall.
- There are tons of Fullmetal Alchemist fanfics out there that contain a new homunculus of sorts. Bonus points if said homunculus is named Jealousy, Rage, Hope, etc.
- Just as likely is a fan-made Chimera character to join Greed's posse. Most often, it's someone who's half-lion or half-tiger or half-eagle... or half-any popular Mary Sue animal.
- Danny Phantom fic: Oh, look, Vlad Plasmius has an evil son...
- Well, Vlad has a history of trying to make evil children... Well, an evil clone of Danny. But the thought's still there.
- The primary antagonist of the World Of Warcraft fanfic Stand of the Exiles
 fits this trope. Among other things, he manages to get the heroine (who is a Sue in her own right) pregnant (with her consent) before getting killed by her love interest (who is also a Stu).
- In a similar vein there was another World Of Warcraft fanfic where the antagonist was billed Daala style as a skilled tactician and warrior without any real indication of it and he would consistently beat the heroes unless their Deus Ex Machina was more powerful than his. The author also gave him a Freudian Excuse that was as lame as it was run of the mill (ye olde dead wife). His character was more like an itemized list of the traits of a Villain Sue than an actual character.
- Can we get a link to that?
- In Ace Attorney fanfiction, new members of the von Karma family almost always end up square in this trope; painfully obvious attempts by the author to make a Magnificent Bastard that turn out wrong.
- "Shreya To Jinx" Is a Teen Titans fanfiction that takes the villain character of Jinx and paints her as a hidden hero of all existence, by way of making sure Raven defeats Trigon, as Raven's the only one who can hope to do so. Borderline in that she's still defeated many times by the "heroes" as in the show (as the story runs parallel to the show itself) and she is not given any more skill than we are shown, but she's "burdened" with knowledge that would require an encyclopaedia sized book to keep straight.
- Hinata Toragami of This Troper's fanwork Yu-Gi-Oh! Negative Zero is omniscient, undefeated at Duel Monsters, and the heir to a leading zaibatsu — and this was before she got infected with the Light of Ruin. She is also not very nice, although the story stops short at depicting her as evil — the closest she comes is completely annihilating the main character in a duel and then humiliating him to boot.
Canon Examples
Anime
- Digimon: Myotismon (or Vamdemon in Japanese). Starts out awesomely Badass, definitely the next step up on the Sorting Algorithm Of Evil. However, by the end of his arc, he winds up taking New Powers As The Plot Demands to Silver Age Superman levels. By the time he was disintegrating powerful attacks with a wave of his hand and sending a charging MegaKabuterimon flying smack into Garudamon by pointing, you knew it was time for this arc to end (and it did soon after, but not before he went Beyond The Impossible one more time by turning into a Kaiju.)
- However, his rather undignified death in the second season kind of makes up for this.
- It is implied that he was empowering himself with the fog he had conjured and amplified through the TV antenna, as well as by drawing on the fear of the people he was rounding up. The fact that, up till that point, he never stayed in a battle which he might have lost also suggests that he was artificially powering himself.
- Nakago from Fushigi Yuugi. He spends the entire series being a Manipulative Bastard, yet gets to go to heaven anyway because the author liked him best.
- The Big Bad Radim from the hentai fantasy manga Dawn of the Silver Dragon is a Villain Sue of an utterly retarded caliber. He sets the plot in motion by doing something that's explicitly stated to be thought impossible to enslave a member of the Silver Dragons, the in-universe equivalent of a female police officer, then escapes several times through mind-boggling omnipotence and utterly broken powers. This is amplified by the fact that the protagonists seem to be, with one exception, complete idiots and the fact that the entire government is on his payroll.
- Naraku of Inu Yasha. As the series' main Big Bad Evil Guy, he's supposed to be monstrously strong. What he's not supposed to be is a demonic incarnation of I Am Not Left Handed. For most of the series, literally every time our heroes got an edge or found a secret technique for doing Naraku in, he's either already immune (Finding out what day of the month his human side fully manifests wouldn't work, because Naraku could move it around at will) or already countered. (Found a magical attack that can actually kill me? Too bad I hid my soul somewhere else). The Ass Pull nature of most of his countermeasures only served to heighten his Stu levels.
- And that's not even touching on his increasingly ridiculous Healing Factor. After Mt. Hakurei, even if they do injure him he just shrugs it off and has regenerated to normal within a couple of chapters (one time, either between chapters or during a single chapter)
- The fifth Naruto movie has somehow managed to create TWO Villain Sues! The first is the newly introduced Zero-Tails Tailed Beast that literally comes out of nowhere with no foreshadowing whatsoever and proceeds to beat the crap out of Naruto, Hannibal Lecture him on his past failures and on how much he sucks without the Nine-Tails, and then forcibly transforms Naruto into his four-tails form against his will! And THEN there's The Big Bad of the movie, who is retconned into being the one who taught Orochimaru his Immortality Jutsu. What puts him into OH, COME ON! territory is that he fakes his own death, which somehow fools both an expert medical ninja and the goddamn Byakugan, and then, in his inevitable fight with Naruto, he unlocks all eight gates WITHOUT DYING, and gives Naruto one of the worst beatdowns he ever received! The only reason he loses is because of a Plot Hole. Thank God the movies aren't canon.
- Dear god... a Filler Villain so evil they can make you die a little inside without anyone ever seeing the movie.
- This movie actually has a THIRD example. Namely, the previously unheard of Sky Country ninja, who appear out of nowhere with FLYING NINJA to utterly destroy Naruto's hometown. The anime writers took care of these ninjas by taking a previously inconsequential character, Shino and gave both him and his bugs the ability to survive underwater for extended periods of time and consume several times their bodymass in metal and uh... ninjas.
- Wow... I now take back everything bad I've ever said about Sasuke being a Mary Sue of any flavor. He at least has crippling retardation to make up for many of his Sue tendencies.
- Not so fast, above troper. Remember that second Villain Sue, the Big Bad that kicked Naruto's ass? Well Sasuke shows up and destroys the bulk of his power with one move in about half a second.
- The anime adaptation of Mega Man Battle Network has the odious Slur, Duo's Dragon. She pretty much orchestrates the whole Seasonal Rot that is Stream by giving out Asteroid Navis to evil people (some Epileptic Trees suggest that she chose evil people on purpose, to convince her master to destroy Earth), and is pretty much undefeatable, no matter how hard the heroes try — even three Program Advances hitting her at the same time couldn't as much as slow her down. In fact, she is only done in by a Wall Banger-inducing Deus Ex Machina.
- Dartz from Yu-Gi-Oh's Doma Arc. He has obscenely overpowered cards, one with infinite attack power, was responsible for almost every major event in world history, was present for the Pharaoh's Memory long before anyone knew anything about it, successfully laid plans to cause one of Atem's few fair losses, has an easy time with Mind Rape regardless of the victim, comes out of everything as a Karma Houdini because he was controlled by a demonic beast, ignoring the fact that he chose to be so and that he was only half-controlled anyway, explaining his mismatching eye colors...did we leave anything out?
- Another such example is Tenma Yakou in ((Yu-Gi-Oh)) R. He's the adopted son of Pegasus and goes after Yugi, believing that Pegasus died by his hand. He has three "Anti-God" cards—one always has an attack power of (strongest monster on the field)+1 (+100 in the actual card game), one that has 4000 Atk / 4000 Def and causes all non-god (or non-anti-god) monsters to suffer a 50% decline in attack and defense, and one that gets 1000 attack points for every card on your opponent's side of the field, and destroys every card on the field when/if it's destroyed. Further, he has an equipment card that permanently increases a god monster's attack power by 1000 points. Would you believe he managed to take over the Kaibacorp building?
Comic Books
- Red Hulk. Ever since his debut, he's been beating the living crap out of pretty much everyone effortlessly, regardless of their power levels or how much sense it makes. He has all the powers of the Incredible Hulk, but has consistent intelligence and New Powers As The Plot Demands. No one knows who he is. And he has now taken over as protagonist in the Hulk's own book.
- Introducing Red She-Hulk. You see that jumpsuit she's wearing and gun she's wielding? Used to belong to Domino. The sai? Elektra's. The stupid, stupid hair? All her own. She managed to shrug off an attack by Wolverine. Incidentally, no one knows who she is, not even the creator, just like with Red Hulk. Rumor is Loeb got pissed that readers actually managed to figure out Rulk's identity and just threw it out the window.
- X-Men's Apocalypse skirts this line in
a few of his stories.
- Superboy Prime: Imagine giving a modern comics character Silver Age Superman's power levels. Now let's make him a Psychopathic Manchild. Now let's give him a suit of armor that negates most of the few weaknesses he had left. Now let's give him a dose of The Punishment that doubles his already ludicrous power levels (to the point where he could slap around Mr. Mxyzptlk). Now let's turn him loose on the DCU at large. NOW let's give him Wolverine Publicity by making him one of, if not the, Big Bad Evil Guys in every Crisis Crossover since 2006. He goes past Villain Sue and straight to walking Diabolus Ex Machina.
- Oh, and to add a cherry to the crap sundae, he's been revealed to be the true identity of the Legion Of Super Heroes' traditional Big Bad, The Time Trapper. And apparently has been all along. Wall, meet head. Head, wall.
- That doesn't quite count. Pretty much everyone has turned out to be the Time Trapper at one point or another.
- Except, of course, the Time Trapper himself.
- Time Trapper choose from all possible futures the one that suits him the most and try to make it happen. In that story he choose those when Prime turned into him, and that's why he was older Prime in this story
- Mr. Mxyzptlk could be considered a parody of Villain Sues, as his powers are nearly endless, but he always loses because he's an idiot.
- While Mxyzptlk is easily one of the most powerful characters in the DCU, he deliberately limits himself to stupid games with Superman, knowing that it'd be no fun if he just killed everyone he didn't like.
- Knights of the Dinner Table: Subverted with Gilead, a former Redshirt whom the party used to test an unknowingly powerful artifact on who ended up taking a huge leap in badassery. The subversion comes into play in that he's only one in the eyes of the murderous PCs, even though as a king he rules with utmost honor and justice.
- The Hood. Somehow possession of an Artifact Of Doom is sufficient to allow this street thug to not only beat up heroes, but also sit at the same table as Norman Osborn, Dr. Doom, and Namor.
- It turns out that he's being manipulated by Dormammu, a major Marvel demon.
- That, however, does not even begin to justify how one possessed thugling is suddenly stronger than the friggin' Sorcerer Supreme!
- ...yes, it does. That's exactly what it does.
- Should note when his first mini he wasn't a Villain Sue, he became one because BMB is pretending his sympathetic parts (his family) doesn't exist. And current mini he's refusing to use his more upper powers.
- This mini explained his power boost, he received in various other titles.
- Also, he sits with Doom and Osborn in Cabal only because he leads a powerful criminal cartel of supervillains. And it was implied at last twice, that without his powers he's just guy with guns.
- That still doesn't explain why a Smug Snake like the Wizard or some Ax Crazy psycho like Purple Man or Scarecrow are simply willing to defer to his leadership, without question and not find some way to cause problems for him.
- Also, he lost a few Villain Sue traits after finding out how his brain looks on Demonic Posession.
- Grant Morrison's JLA villain Prometheus is a subversion. He spends an issue effortlessly dealing with the Leaguers by being Crazy Prepared, even subjecting Batman to The Worf Effect. However, the very next issue his plan falls apart because he couldn't count on various contingencies, had a glaring gap in his knowledge, and didn't take as much care as he should have in killing off various Leaguers.
- The Marquis of Death (Yes that is really his name), Master of Doom. Shows up on earth to berate Dr.Doom because he thinks he's not doing enough pointless evil, declaring that the world deserves a new menace, in the form of himself. So he sets Dr Doom on fire, traps him in a fantasy world, and drops him into some sharks in prehistory. The arc is not finished but barring a rather impressive reversal this features a man who has faced beings of ultimate power without flinching being flustered and used as a chew toy by a body double for the Mouth of Sauron, whose motive is for the sake of being evil.
- This is finally and thankfully fixed in Marquis' last issue where he still manages to lose, quite badly, to the Fantastic Four. Then before he can crawl away licking his wounds, Doom shows up again and promptly kills him on the spot.
- However, he still get more Villain Sue traits, after revealing, that he is future Clyde Wyndcham, guy from 1985 (created by the same writer) - he came from Alternate Universe, was his world's first and only mutant, and was powerful enough to mind-controlling Galactus. Before FF beats him up, they weakened him by making him fight with his past self (who wasn't pleased with a fact that he grew up to be Evil), and then combined their powers with powers of every Fantastic Four from realities destroyed by Marquiz. And by the same time, Doom turned into villain sue himself Now he has a million years, and enough juice to kill The Watcher. Nobody respect cosmic dietes these days.
- Possibly fortunately this power boost seems to have been ignored in every subsequent appearance of Doom.
- Thanos of Titan, for creator Jim Starlin. To the point that whenever another writer would do a story where Thanos suffered any sort of defeat, Starlin would follow up with a story explaining why it didn't count. It finally reached the point where Starlin's over-protective behavior was mocked by having Thanos defeated by Squirrel Girl, followed by Uatu the Watcher showing up and announcing "That really was Thanos, not a clone or a double of anything like that." This was handwaved by the same writer as Thanos being rumored to have the ability to create clones so powerful they could potentially fool a Watcher, but it was never explicitly dispelled.
- To be fair, Starlin by that time (after Infinity Gauntlet) had moved Thanos's character beyond the "wants to become omnipotent and conquer the universe to impress Death" version, and yet other writers kept writing him with precisely that personality and goals.
- From Irredeemable, the Plutonian is one of the few examples of this trope that actually works for the betterment of the story. He's totally invincible and always seems to be one step ahead of the heroes plotting against him, and as far as we know, there's nobody in that whole universe who even approaches his level of power. And he's so terrifying, every country in the world wants him as their leader out of fear. But instead of using the Plutonian's Villain Sueness to indicate to the audience how cool he is, Mark Waid uses it to add suspense. How can the heroes even hope to win against such an unbeatable foe?
- Dr. Hurt is a deconstruction of this trope. Him and his organization have a lot of money, end up taking over the bat cave, command an amazing amount of power, ends up recruiting The Joker (even calling him his servant!) and claims to be Bruce Wayne's father! So what happens? Batman locks up the entire organization in Arkham and The Joker mocks the organization and Dr. Hurt for thinking they could take down Batman. Needless to say they're all roundly defeated.
Film
- No Country For Old Men's Anton Chigurh. He strolls through the movie like some kind of omniscient terminator without a thought to tactics or hiding his trail, finds the money and gets away scot-free. At the end of the movie he is hit by a car and walks away just to show that even random chance and karmic justice can't stop him. And then he single-handedly instills in the sheriff hunting him a crushing despair at his inability to uphold justice that causes him to retire, simply by being such an implacable force of pure evil. Some would say that his unstoppability is a necessity because of his role as the borderline Anthropomorphic Personification of evil, however his success seems to be due to the universe seeming to bend over backwards for him rather than any explainable intelligence, skill, or power on his part.
- Well, that's what being an Anthropomorphic Personification of
Evil Death means. The trope's justified in that he's an integral part of that unstoppable universe.
- But it's not some magical fantasy universe, it's west Texas. There is no good reason that he could get away with all those things, but he does anyway.
- It's a Cormac Mc Carthy novel. His villains are noted as being almost implicitly supernatural (Judge Holden from blood Meridian being another example).
Live Action TV
- Arthur Petrelli from Heroes, full-throttle. He kills off Adam Monroe in swift fashion, murders Maury Parkman with a gesture, retcons the first season's Big Bad into his sniveling lackey as a flashback.
- Sylar's a bigger case, having survived
three four seasons and isn't letting up. He manages to dodge every situation where he normally would've died. His telekinesis and power absorption ends up trumping any other character with ease. Plus, he ended up killing Arthur without breaking a sweat...although having the Haitian nearby, trying his hardest to suppress Arthur, must have helped a little.
- Not sure if Papa Petrelli really qualifies- he's more of a God Mode Villain and is brought down by a combination of legit hero actions and his own inability to not be a dick when it really counts.
- Megan Parker from Drake And Josh is a possible case. She seems to revel in doing things to her brothers that seem downright sadistic, feigning total innocence (thus making her brothers look like the bad guys) and getting away with it with no remorse whatsoever.
Literature
- Zaravaz from the Fallowblade series is such an incredibly over the top example of this that it isn't funny. From the moment he appears, he gets literal pages of poetic descriptive prose about how incredibly beautiful he is. Everything he does is either ridiculously perfect or incredibly cruel. Which the author attempts to justify, by saying he's doing it because humans are cruel to animals, therefore giving the silver goblins (species of which Zaravaz is king) the moral duty to kill every human. He doesn't end up doing it though. Instead he ends up falling into the magical fire used to forge the titular blade, getting "the evil burned out of him" and becoming a nice guy. Who can suddenly fly.
- Nick Geraci is technically the antagonist of the Mark Winegardner sequels to The Godfather (The Godfather Returns and The Godfather's Revenge). In fact, he is effectively the Villain Protagonist, taking up the largest single role in the story. He is a heavyweight champion boxer, a charismatic, incredibly shrewd crook who survives an aircrash that kills two rivals, is able to spot Batista's fall years before it happens, escapes Michael's attempts to have him killed several times and used as a mouthpiece to point out all the mistakes Vito and Michael made. Oh yeah and he kills Tom Hagen. Finally, his memoirs apparently serve as the inspiration for the whole Godfather series.
- Lilith of the Nightside series certainly counts, wasting the villains of almost every previous book with minimal effort. In fact, the only way to stop her is to bring a God Sue back to life.
- The Grigari from Star Trek Expanded Universe books by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristin Kathryn Rusch are also a race of VillainSues, but change considerably depending on which book they're in - which is okay because the Star Trek Expanded Universe has Negative Continuity. Most notably in the Millennium trilogy, in which they easily defeat an alliance of the Klingons, Federation and Borg.
- Blurring the line between Canon Sue and Possession Sue (because nobody admits that that story happened) is Star Wars's IG-88, who was turned into a demigod mastermind who took over the Second Death Star without anyone noticing, and was defeated solely because he paused a little too long, at some points making a fool of the series's actual Magnificent Bastard and Big Bad, Palpatine, and taking over a planet singlehandedly, all in the Fan Wankiest EU story in human existence.
- Unless, of course, you read the story like a brilliant parody of the concept of the Villain Sue, in which case, the fact that IG-88 accomplishes all of exactly nothing in the end before being blown up with the second Death Star is utterly hilarious, all the moreso because it's played absolutely straight-faced.
- The Star Wars Expanded Universe also gives us Admiral Daala and Jacen Solo/ Darth Caedus. Daala gets here on shear force of Informed Ability- we are repeatedly hit over the head with how brilliant she is, but her track record is that of someone who's only real talent is in the area of Stuff Blowing Up (often her own stuff). Lately she's somehow become a Villain With Good Publicity President Evil. Caedus shares the Informed Ability drawback, coupled with a strange ability to give everyone he meets a huge Idiot Ball. Talk about the plot bending in favor of the villain- Legacy Of The Force could have been sorted out in a trilogy or less if only Luke, Mara, and the Jedi Council had been paying attention to his impressively rapid descent towards Obviously Evil.
- Can an inanimate object be a Sue? If so, the Sun Crusher, yet another Superweapon Of The Week, qualifies in spades. An absurdly uber-powerful ship the size of an X Wing fighter that blows up entire star systems and ends up being the focal point of the entire Jedi Academy Trilogy (Why yes, this is another Kevin J Anderson offering. I'm sure you're just shocked).
- The Dominion of the Draka in S.M Sterling's Draka Alternate History novels have been accused of being an entire nation of these; the author has acknowledged that the purpose of the books is to examine what would happen if The Empire won, which means that the entire world and history of the story bends to accommodate the Draka either winning all the time or people overlooking the incredibly obvious and horrible things that the Draka do until it's too late. The Draka themselves very swiftly become superhuman and unstoppable military geniuses who, in contrast to their opponents stupidity, never seem to make mistakes.
- Mina from the War Of Souls and Dark Disciple trilogies (the latter is about her) of Dragonlance, is one of these. First she's an unkillable super-strategist with charisma enough that even her enemies like her. And then she creates magical almost-unkillable vampires who worship only her. And then she turns out to have been a goddess all along. The child of Paladine himself, even!
- In War of Souls this is justified because she's drawing on the experience and power of Takhisis, dark goddess and traditional Dragonlance Big Bad. There really isn't any excuse for Dark Disciple, though, besides Margaret Weis simply falling in love with the character.
Tabletop Games
- The Big Bad Jefferson Carter of John Wick fame (or infamy — Your Mileage May Vary). As described by Steven Howard:
Carter is an evil mastermind who "runs" all the superheroes and all the supervillains in the campaign. Why? In Mr. Wick's words, "Because he can." "Because he can" is not a reason. There are any number of things that Carter can do. Why does he choose to do this one thing in preference to the many other things he could do instead? There can be no answer to that question, because Jefferson Carter is devoid of anything resembling human motivation. He's not a character, he's a plot device. He's the Killer GM inserted into the game world. Professor X is secretly the Kingpin, and he's read your character sheet.
- The World Of Darkness features Villain Sues in droves in both its incarnations. From the Antediluvians, the creators of the vampire clans, to the True Fae who steal away human beings. These characters are such sues that a good deal of them don't even have stats. They're just that powerful.
- In Vampire: The Masquerade, the rules for fighting Caine are simple. All the book states is: "You lose".
- Sad but true, the "You lose" rule came from Justin Achilli, who by this point was just tired of the whole damn thing. He one-upped himself with not one but two Parody Sue vampires in Vampire The Requiem: Longinus and Dracula. Both are almost laughable weak-sauce versions of Caine.
- Then again, this troper always considered Caine in the Old World of Darkness to be more of background to the setting, not appearing in games in person in any tangible form in modern and medieval games, and in Enochian games being basically the God-like ruler that keeps the setting from reverting into complete munchkinism, and thus considering statting them either unnecessary or leading to the death of a central figure of the mythos...
- The True Fae of Changeling: the Lost are a classic example of a Villain Sue, I reckon. They're hellish, sociopathic and delusional monsters who so firmly believe that they're perfectly mighty, cool and awesome that they can do no wrong and must destroy other True Fae utterly to prove it. Also, they're on record as at least once having saved the world from something only they could have hoped to defeat, so they could continue playing with the world. As if that wasn't bad enough, they're also the single most ridiculously powerful things ever statted in the nWoD and a normal player cannot hope to survive an encounter with a True Fae that is genuinely trying to kill them.
- That's the point of the True Fae, though, depending on which interpretation of their origins you go with for your chronicle; they're creatures born from the dreams, desires, and emotions of humanity as a whole, or Changelings that have lost their humanity to the maddening powers that changed them to begin with. The Others, at their core, are the limitless powers of the imagination, unchecked by reason or a sensible ego— Mary Sue is precisely what they are, only they aren't limited to a single person or a Notepad document.
- While the True Fae may indeed be "the single most ridiculously powerful things ever statted in the nWoD", that's only because Werewolf: the Forsaken and Geist: the Sin-Eaters make a point of not giving the Incarnae and Celestine spirits of the Shadow Realm or the Deathlords of the Underworld stats. To quote W:tF (p.279): "Spirits above Rank 5 don’t need traits. Their abilities so far outstrip even the greatest of the Uratha that rolling dice for them would be meaningless. They are, to all intents and purposes, godlike beings." So saying that True Fae are the most powerful beings ever ever statted is a bit disingenuous and misleading, since the only reason they have stats at all is so that, as ridiculously powerful as they are, the characters at least have some chance, however slim, of defeating them — unlike the Incarnae and Celestine spirits and Deathlords, which are expected to be rarely if ever encountered, much less defeated.
- While it is true that the sample True Fae statted in the CtL core is actually beatable by an experienced party, later supplements reveal that the Horned Hunter is not only by far the runt of the litter, but that the 'True Fae' the party fights are actually merely avatars, and that what it would take to actually kill the True Fae itself is a series of mighty challenges (in Arcadia, no less) that pretty much only another True Fae could even remotely hope to accomplish.
- Don't forget the part where later Changeling supps have gone into exquisite, loving detail why the top-end antagonists (or protagonists) from the other nWoD game lines can't even reach the True Fae in Arcadia, let alone hope to seriously hurt them there. The True Fae have entire chapters full of special rules designed solely to give them an insurmountable home-field advantage. They are the only antagonists in the entire nWoD game line that have this.
- Actually, so are Abyssal entities.
- There are the Exarchs of Mage The Awakening, who are so powerful that they turned the nWoD into the horrible place it is now (they are the Gnostic Demiurge). The only reason they don't wipe out humanity is because they adore being more powerful than puny mortals.
- The Demon Lords And Archdevils of Hell are mentioned as using avatars with the power to raze whole cities.
- The True Fae fall on the edge between being very powerful antagonists and being Cosmic Horrors in their own right. For the record, it is certainly possible to oppose them- they have frailties (folkloric vulnerabilities that banish, harm, or force a particular behavior from them) and Cold Iron (which cuts through defenses and illusions like butter, and is the only thing that inflicts aggravated damage to them). But perhaps the most crippling weakness is their True Name, both because knowing that name can forcibly bind the fae to the speaker and because oaths sworn on the True Name MUST be kept or the fae will cease to be. Discover either the Name or the nature of the Legend it adheres to, you have the power to kill the fae.
- It's been often hinted in Changeling lore that the True Fae can be killed, and there might even be a way to make it stick, but it's rare and hard- there's certainly no official rules for it.
- Another example from White Wolf: Aberrant brought us Divis Mal. The fact that he wore a costume and called himself "Bad God" in Latin, despite living in a world which prided itself on a realistic approach to super powers was only the beginning: he was clearly the most powerful being in the setting (One sample adventure features Divis Mal beating up a Superman expie across the skies, while the P Cs are graced with the ability to decide the fate of a lone criminal) with a Magneto-esque philosophy the writers blithely assume P Cs will always go along with because Mal's the one saying it, and we were evntually told that the name of the game is a reference not to the (moderately superpowered) P Cs, but to Divis Mal. That's right, he's so cool your story is named after him, instead.
- The hosts of RPG podcast Fear the Boot refer to this character type as Baron von Badass.
- Villain Sue is but one form of Baron von Badass; the Baron is just as likely to be an NPC hero that renders the PCs redundant by being better at anything likely to come up. For bonus points, get a Baron where the only solution is to let the Baron stop him.
- Ravenloft, the Gothic Horror setting for D&D (second and third editions) could be said to exist solely because of its Villain Sues. Darklords are villains who are so evil the are granted a domain, a piece of land in which they are trapped but in which they have nearly godlike powers. Even so, a few characters stand as a more Sue than others. Azalin Rex comes to mind, the lich who nearly blew the world up TWICE and seems to one a third go at it; Strahd Von Zarovich, the vampire that inspired the whole setting; Harkon Lucas, the wolfwere bard and so on.
- Beyond even this are the Sues that could not even be contained by the land of Villain Sues. Lord Soth, who ended up in Ravenloft due to his popularity as the Villain Sue of Dragonlance, and who left Ravenloft due to his popularity as the Villain Sue of Dragonlance. But the kicker was Vecna, the Chained God, who's Suedom allowed him to violate the setting rules of not only Ravenloft but Planescape's Sigil as well, and by who's hand the entire 2nd edition died and rolled into the third edition.
Webcomics
- Satan in College Roomies From Hell!!! After his first appearance as a gag villain, every single appearance tries to portray him as some Magnificent Bastard that has some major Xanatos Roulette going on, with every "defeat" being a concession to further his goals. Instead, he comes across as the ultimate expression of the Cerebus Syndrome the comic went through, where he's pretty much completely invincible and everything is a Foregone Conclusion (literally; he knows how everything is going to happen because "time has no meaning" in hell, so every damned soul is already there). It's particularly frustrating because it basically sucked all the humor out of the comic to have a completely hopeless scenario that bears more resemblance to Cosmic Horror than to the light-hearted humor comic it started out as.
- Much of the fandom believes that close to 90% of what he says is a complete lie, though, and few even argue that he may not even be the real deal. The author's religious sensibilities seem to have switched around during the comic's run, possibly explaining the changes. Whether anything will be resolved ever is so far been kept in the dark.
- A few fans have suggested that the comic will end with Satan taking off his head, revealing the author's grinning face underneath.
- In Dominic Deegan, during the War in Hell arc, Karnak wavered in and out of Villain Sue territory. True, it did require intervention from the "good guys" for him to win, but he still was able to rip his fellow demon lords apart with his bare hands. Then, there's the way he became the King of Hell...
Web Original
- In Survival Of The Fittest, Mariavel Varella would fit under this classification - at least in the minds of a majority of the RP's members. Her over the top 'villainness' is simply sickening, and can be so badly executed it isn't even funny. She also seems to have a tragic past just for the purposes of Angst, and, for her age, almost impossbily good looks (including a body that, while rail thin, is also endowed with D or DD cup breasts, which shouldn't be at all possible for her size, build, or age without at the least causing intense back pain). She also has absurd fighting abilities, including backflipping over an attacking opponent who had at least a foot on her, and happened to be a giant angry Finnish hockey player. She then injured him.
|
|
